sr 

H-Oi 


B    3 


rOL.  IV,  No.  2  April-June,  1917 

MEMOIRS  OF  THE 

MERICAN    ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
ASSOCIATION 


THE  REINDEER  AND  ITS  DOMESTICATION 


BY 

BERTHOLD  LAUFER 


PUBLISHED  QUARTERLY  FOR  THE 
AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION 

AT  41  NORTH  QUEEN  ST.,  LANCASTER,  PA.,  U,  S,  A. 


Application  made  for  entry  at  the  Post  Office  at  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania,  as  second-class  matter, 
Act  of  Congress  of  March  3,  1879. 


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THE  REINDEER  AND  ITS  DOMESTICATION 

BY 
BERTHOLD  LAUFER 


THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS   DOMESTICATION 
BY   BERTHOLD   LAUFER 

THE  domestication  of  the  reindeer  has  not  yet  been  satis- 
factorily expounded.  Some  interesting  though  brief  essays 
on  the  subject  have  been  contributed  by  scholars  engaged 
in  the  research  of  animal  domestication, — first  of  all,  by  E.  Hahn,1 
in  his  admirable  work  Die  Haustiere,  whose  chapter  on  the  rein- 
deer is  the  best  hitherto  written;  then  follow  C.  Keller,2  R.  Miiller,3 
L.  Reinhardt,4  and  M.  Hilzheimer.5  These  various  contributions 
are  useful  as  far  as  they  go;  but  what  we  miss  in  them,  above  all, 
are  the  historical  and  ethnographical  points  of  view,  and  the 
exploitation  of  the  abundant  material  accumulated  by  ethnog- 
raphers who  have  had  occasion  to  study  reindeer-breeding  tribes 
at  close  quarters.  The  Russian  explorers  of  Siberia  occupy  here 
the  first  place;  and  it  was  one  of  the  writer's  chief  aims  to  avail 
himself  of  their  data,  as  far  as  this  literature  is  accessible  to  him. 
While  the  observations  of  ethnographers  working  in  the  field  are 
of  prime  importance,  the  interpretations  of  their  data  must  oc- 
casionally be  subjected  to  certain  modifications,  not  all  ethnog- 
raphers being  sufficiently  schooled  in  the  problems  of  domestica- 
tion, or  familiar  with  the  methods  and  results  of  that  science. 
The  novel  feature  of  the  present  investigation  lies  in  the  fact  that 
here  for  the  first  time  early  Chinese  sources  relative  to  the  domesti- 

1  Die  Haustiere  und  ihre  Beziehungen  zur  Wirtschaft  des  Menschen,  eine  geogr aphis che 
Studie  (Leipzig,  1896),  pp.  262-267.     Compare  the  same  author's  "  Die  Transport- 
tiere  in  ihrer  Verbreitung  und  in  ihrer  Abhangigkeit  von  geographischen  Beding- 
ungen,"  Verhandlungen  des  XII.  Deutschen  Geographentages  in  Jena  (1897),  pp.  186- 
187. 

2  Naturgeschichte  der   Haustiere   (Berlin,    1905),   pp.    198-202;   Stammesgeschichte 
unserer  Haustiere  (Leipzig,  1909),  p.  93;  also  in  Kraemer's  Der  Menken  und  die  Erdet 
vol.  i,  p.  257. 

3  Die  geographische  Verbreitung  der  Wirtschaflstiere  (Leipzig,  1903),  pp.  137-148. 

4  Kulturgeschichte  der  Nutztiere  (Miinchen,  1912),  pp.  228-237. 

5  Die  Haustiere  in  Abstammung  und  Entwicklung,  pp.  72-73. 

91 


369363 


92  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

cated  reindeer  are  laid  under  contribution,  and  that  an  effort  has 
been  made  to  determine  the  origin  of  the  domestication  more 
precisely  as  to  time  and  space.  The  writer  attempts  to  answer  three 
questions,  as  far  as  this  is  possible  in  the  present  state  of  science: — 
When  did  the  primeval  domestication  originate?  Where  was  the 
center  of  it,  and  how  did  it  propagate  from  this  center  to  other 
culture  areas?  What  was  the  process  that  brought  the  primeval 
domestication  about? 

At  the  outset  two  current  popular  notions  connected  with  the 
Old-World  reindeer  should  be  banished, — that  the  reindeer  isT"t 
exclusively  an  inhabitant  of  the  tundra  of  northern  Europe  and  I 
Asia,  and  that  it  is  employed  exclusively  by  the  peoples  inhabiting  1 
the  northern  littorals  of  Europe  and  Asia.  The  reindeer  haurffs 
the  woods  of  high  mountainous  districts  as  well,  and  thrives  in  the 
forests  of  the  Ural  and  Baikal  regions.  The  records  referring  to 
the  woodland  reindeer  are  much  older  than  those  pertaining  to  the 
tundra  reindeer  of  the  maritime  coasts.  It  will  be  seen  that  in  all 
likelihood  we  have  to  assume  an  historical  relation  between  the 
two  varieties;  that  is  to  say,  the  woodland  reindeer  is  the  first  in 
point  of  time  that  was  domesticated,  and  spread  from  southern 
into  northern  regions,  gradually  developing  into  the  tundra  rein- 
deer through  infusion  with  the  blood  of  wild  forms  of  the  tundra. 
The  wild  reindeer  has  the  same  southern  expansion:  it  abounds  in 
the  extensive  woods  of  the  governments  Vyatka  and  Perm  and  in 
the  adjoining  northern  portion  of  Kazan,  in  Russia.  Entire  herds 
formerly  migrated  from  the  Ural  into  the  afforested  region  between 
the  Kama  and  Ufa  (56°  N.  lat.),  even  as  far  as  the  southern  wood- 
land boundary  line,  almost  as  far  as  52°  N.  lat.1  The  Bashkir  hunt 
the  animal  along  the  Ufa  under  55°  N.  lat. 

1  J.  F.  Brandt,  Zoogeographische  und  palaeontol.  Beitrdge  (St.  Petersburg,  1867), 
p.  65.  See  also  A.  Nehring,  Ueber  Tundren  und  Steppen  der  Jetzt-  und  Vorzeit  (Berlin, 
1890),  pp.  31,  108.  P.  S.  Pallas  (Reise  dutch  verschiedene  Provinzen  des  russischen 
Reichs,  vol.  in,  p.  470)  reported  in  1773,  "  In  the  fir-tree  woods  on  the  Ufa  and  through- 
out the  woodlands  as  far  as  the  Kama,  there  are,  aside  from  other  deer,  still  many 
wild  reindeer  (in  Bashkir  yusa),  frequently  wandering  in  large  herds,  and,  judging 
from  the  antlers  I  saw,  somewhat  smaller  than  the  northern  ones." 


LAUFER]  THE  REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  93 

HISTORICAL  NOTES 

The  first  and  most  prominent  fact  about  the  domesticated 
reindeer  is  that  it  is  entirely  lacking  in  aboriginal  America  (the 
artificial  introduction  into  Alaska  is  of  very  recent  date),  and 
represents  an  exclusive  cultural  property  of  the  Old  World.  North 
America  abounds  in  wild  reindeer  (known  as  caribou)  and  elk  or 
moose;  but  the  native  population  only  hunted  these  animals,  and 
never  made  any  endeavor  to  domesticate  them.  Consequently 
the  Old-World  domestication  cannot  be  a  priori  of  very  ancient 
date,  but  was  accomplished  only  at  a  late  time,  when  the  population 
of  America  was  settled.  This  consideration  will  be  amply  con- 
firmed by  the  history  of  the  domestication. 

Certain  it  is  that  the  classical  authors  have  left  us  no  account 
whatever  of  the  domesticated  reindeer.  The  Danish  archaeologist 
G.  F.  L.  Sarauw1  has  made  a  very  interesting  study  of  the  informa- 
tion contained  in  the  writings  of  the  ancients  in  regard  to  elk  and 
wild  reindeer,  but  there  is  complete  silence  as  to  tamed  forms. 
Hahn2  is  quite  right  in  maintaining  that  the  Greeks  were  not  so 
unfamiliar  with  the  north  of  eastern  Europe  that  such  a  striking 
phenomenon  as  the  tamed  harts  should  not  have  been  known 
among  them  in  one  form  or  another,  had  they  existed  at  the  time; 
but  all  observations  of  the  ancients  strictly  refer  to  wild  forms. 
This  state  of  affairs  meets  its  parallel  among  the  Chinese.  They 
were  well  acquainted  with  the  host  of  tribes  living  in  the  north 
and  northwest  of  their  country,  but  in  no  Chinese  author  of  the 
pre-Christian  era  do  we  meet  with  a  single  notice  of  the  reindeer. 
Only  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  A.D.  did  tidings  of  a  tame  stag, 
used  for  drawing  sledges  and  for  milking,  reach  the  ears  of  the 
Chinese.  It  is  well  known  that  the  wild  reindeer  was  among  the 
game  hunted  by  paleolithic  man  of  western  Europe.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  he  ever  attempted  to  domesticate  this  animal.  Its 
domestication  manifestly  falls  within  historical  times;  and,  if  so, 
there  must  be  some  way  of  calculating  by  historical  methods  more 

1  "Das  Rentier  in  Europa  zu  den  Zeiten  Alexanders  und  Caesars,"  published  in 
Mindeskrift  for  Japetus  Steenstrup  (K0benhavn,  1913),  34  p.,  4°. 

2  Haustiete,  p.  263. 


94  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

exactly  the  terminus  a  quo.  The  students  of  domestication  have 
usually  regarded  that  of  the  reindeer  as  a  comparatively  recent 
event,  and  as  the  most  recent  of  all  domestications;  but  their 
impressions  naturally  have  remained  of  a  somewhat  vague  char- 
acter. C.  Keller1  remarks: 

The  passage  into  the  state  of  domesticity  cannot  have  taken  place  at  an 
early  date,  since  neither  specific  races  have  as  yet  been  formed,  nor  is  the  sub- 
missiveness  to  man  much  developed.  The  herds  graze  wherever  it  suits  them; 
and  the  business  of  milking  is  very  complex,  as  the  cows  behave  stubbornly. 

L.  Reinhardt 2  has  expressed  the  following  opinion : 

The  reindeer  wa's  elevated  by  man  into  a  domesticated  animal  at  a  very 
late  period,  and  generally  is  still  domesticated  very  deficiently.  The  time  when 
this  happened  can  no  longer  be  determined;  however,  it  cannot  have  taken  place 
much  earlier  than  five  hundred  years  ago. 

This  figure  is  far  too  low,  and  must  be  multiplied  at  least  by  three, 
as  we  have  Chinese  allusions  to  the  domestic  reindeer  dating  in  the 
\/  fifth  century  A.D.  Even  without  such  historical  data,  Reinhardt's 
calculation  would  hardly  be  acceptable,  as  the  wide  geographical 
distribution  of  the  reindeer  would  argue  in  favor  of  a  much  earlier 
domestication.  M.  Wilcken's  assertion3  that  the  domestication 
of  the  reindeer  took  place  in  prehistoric  times  misses  the  mark 
entirely. 

The  earliest  reference  to  tame  reindeer  in  western  sources  is 
contained  in  the  famous  narrative  of  the  Norseman  Ohthere,  who 
"  said  to  his  lord,  King  Alfred,  that  he  dwelt  farthest  north  of  all 
Northmen."  Ohthere,  of  whom  we  unfortunately  know  very 
little,  was  born  in  Haloga  (Helge)-land  in  Norway,  and  undertook 
in  A.D.  890  several  voyages,  one  of  which  was  from  Norway  toward 
the  extreme  northern  coasts.  In  the  course  of  his  travelings  he 
rounded  the  North  Cape,  discovered  the  White  Sea,  where  he 
reached  the  south  coast  of  the  Kola  Peninsula,  and  became  ac- 
quainted with  the  Finn  and  Biarmians  (Beormas)  or  Permians  in 
the  northeast  of  European  Russia.  The  memorable  account  of 

1  H.  Kraemer,  Der  Mensch  und  die  Erde,  vol.  I,  p.  257. 

2  Kulturgeschichte  der  Nutztiere,  p.  232. 

3Grundziige  der  Naturgeschichte  der  Haustiere  (2d  ed.  by  J.  U.  Duerst),  (Leipzig, 
1905),  p.  172. 


LAUFER]  THE  REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  95 

his  expeditions  was  included  by  Alfred  the  Great  in  his  Anglo- 
Saxon  translation  of  the  Hormista  of  Paulus  Orosius.1  Here  we 
read  as  follows: 

He  [Ohthere]  was  a  very  rich  man  in  those  possessions  in  which  their  wealth 
consists,  that  is,  in  wild  animals.  He  still  had  when  he  came  to  the  king  six 
hundred  tame  deer  unsold.  These  deer  they  call  'reindeer;'  six  of  them  were 
decoy-deer;  these  are  much  prized  among  the  Finn,  because  they  capture  the 
wild  deer  with  them.  He  ranked  with  the  foremost  men  in  the  land,  though  he 
had  not  more  than  twenty  cattle,  twenty  sheep,  and  twenty  swine;  and  the 
little  that  he  ploughed  he  ploughed  with  horses.2 

Schlozer3  and  I.  A.  Sjogren,4  taking  the  term  "  Finn  "  in  Oh- 
there 's  narrative  in  the  sense  of  "  Lapp,"  have  advanced  the 
theory  that  he  lived  among  Lapp  and  spoke  their  language,5  and 
that  it  was  Lapplanders,  who  cared  for  his  reindeer  purchased  from 
them.  This  theory  is  baseless,  and  we  gain  nothing  from  it. 
Whether  Ohthere  had  obtained  his  reindeer  from  Lapp  or  Finn  or 
Scandinavians,  or  had  captured  them  himself,  his  story  can  prove 
little  or  nothing  along  the  line  of  domestication;  at  best,  it  shows 
the  very  first  stage  necessary  in  reaching  this  object.  All  members 
of  the  family  Cervidae  may  easily  be  driven  into  enclosures  and 
kept  there  indefinitely,  for  which  many  examples  will  be  cited 
hereafter.  Ohthere  does  not  state  that  he  made  any  practical 

1  The  original  manuscript  of  Alfred's  work,  beautifully  written,  is  preserved  in 
the  Cottonian  collection  of  manuscripts  in  the  British  Museum.     It  was  first  published 
by  Daines  Harrington  under  the  title,  The  Anglo-Saxon  Version  from  the  Historian 
Orosius,  by  Alfred  the  Great.     Together  with  an  English  translation  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  (London,  1773). 

2  J.  McCubbin  and  D.  T.  Holmes,  Orosian  Geography,  p.  8.     J.  Bosworth,  De- 
scription of  Europe  and  the  Voyages  of  Ohthere  and  Wulfstan,  written  in  Anglo-Saxon 
by  King  Alfred  the  Great,  p.  12,  translates:   "He  had,  moreover,  when  he  came  to  the 
King,  six  hundred  tame  deer  of  his  own  breeding."     The  Anglo-Saxon  text  of  the 
above  passage  runs  as  follows:    "J>a  deor  hi  hata'S    '  hranas;  '  }>ara  waeron  syx  stael- 
hranas;  fta  beoS  swytSe  dyre  mid  Finnum,  for  ftaem  hjTfoft  ba  wildan  hranas  mid." 

3  Allgemeine  nordische  Geschichte,  p.  445. 
*Gesammelte  Schriften,  vol.  I,  p.  314. 

6  This  point  is  rather  doubtful.  All  that  Ohthere  himself  tells  us  in  point  of 
language  amounts  to  this:  "  The  Permians  told  him  many  stories  both  of  their  own 
land  and  of  the  lands  which  were  around  them,  but  he  did  not  know  how  much  was 
truth  as  he  did  not  see  it  himself.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  Finn  and  the  Permians 
spoke  nearly  the  same  language."  This  observation  does  not  lend  itself  to  far-reaching 
conclusions. 


96  AMERICAN  ATNHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

use  of  his  deer.  In  'all  probability,  it  was  merely  the  venture  of  a 
sportsman,  who  had  an  aesthetic  pleasure  in  the  animals,  like  a 
park-owner  in  fallow  deer.  Ohthere's  account  stands  perfectly 
isolated:  we  read  no  more  about  tame  reindeer  during  or  after  his 
time.  Only  as  late  as  the  fifteenth  century  do  we  hear  for  the  first 
time  about  domesticated  reindeer  from  Russian  sources.  If  at 
Ohthere's  time  the  Finn  or  the  Lapp  had  really  possessed  the  rein- 
deer, we  should  justly  expect  to  find  it  mentioned  in  the  Kalewala; 
but  this  is  not  the  case.  The  songs  of  the  Kalewala  know  only  of 
the  elk  and  the  wild  Tarandus. 

It  is  stated  by  Hahn1  that,  according  to  Lehrberg,  in  1499  the 
Samoyed,  besides  dog-sleighs,  had  reindeer  on  the  backs  of  which 
they  used  to  ride.  C.  Keller2  has  adopted  this  from  him,  and  the 
"  fact  "  has  finally  been  popularized  in  H.  Kraemer's  Der  Mensch 
und  die  Erde.*  It  is  striking,  of  course,  that  the  Sajnoyed  should 
have  mounted  reindeer  in  1499,  while  they  never  did  so  at  any 
later  time,  nor  do  so  at  present.  In  fact,  the  reindeer  is  ridden 
only  by  the  Soyot  and  Tungus,  not,  however,  by  any  western 
tribes.4  Thus  suspicion  is  ripe  that  there  may  be  some  misunder- 
standing of  the  original  Russian  source  on  which  this  deduction 
is  based.  Lehrberg's  work  in  the  original  German  is  not  within 
my  reach,5  but  I  have  access  to  a  Russian  translation  of  it  and  to 
the  Russian  document  on  which  his  data  are  based.  This  is  re- 
printed in  Shcseglov's  Chronological  Review  of  Important  Data  from 
the  History  of  Siberia*  and  relates  to  the  year  1499.  In  order  to 

1  H austier e,  p.  265. 

2  Naturgeschichle  der  Haustiere,  p.  201. 

3  Vol.  i,  p.  257.     Here  we  even  read  the  absurdity  that  "the  oldest  accounts  of 
tame  reindeer  come  from  Lehrberg,  who  in  1499  observes  that  the  Samoyed  ride  on 
them," — a  complete  misunderstanding. 

4  Hahn  himself  was  struck  by  this  anomaly,  stating  farther  on  (p.  266)  that  "this 
exception  would  seem  doubtful  to  him  until  further  confirmation  were  received." 

6  The  work  of  A.  C.  Lehrberg  bears  the  title  Untersuchungen  zur  Erlauterung  der 
aelteren  Geschichte  Russlands  (St.  Petersburg,  1816).  An  interesting  analysis  of  his 
researches  has  been  given  by  Klaproth,  Memoir es  relatifs  a  I'Asie,  vol.  I  (Paris,  1824), 
pp.  116-146. 

6 1.  V.  Shcseglov,  Xronologiceski  perezen'  vazn'aisix  dannyx  iz  istorii  Sibiri  1032- 
1882  (Irkutsk,  1883),  p.  12,  published  by  the  East-Siberian  Section  of  the  Imperial 
Russian  Geographical  Society. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  97 

understand  these  events,  it  is  necessary  to  premise  that  Ivan  the 
Great  (1462-1505),  after  destroying  the  liberty  of  Novgorod,  began 
the  conquest  of  northern  Russia,  and  in  that  year  the  Russians 
completed  the  subjugation  of  what  was  called  by.  them  Yugra; 
that  is,  the  territory  of  the  Ural  Mountains,  inhabited  by  Wogul 
and  other  Ugrian  tribes,  and  formerly  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  Republic  of  Novgorod,  in  the  documents  of  which  Yugra  is 
mentioned  as  early  as  1264.  The  expedition  of  1499  was  conducted 
under  the  command  of  the  Prince  Semyon  Fedorovic  Kurbski, 
Prince  Pyotr  (Peter)  Fedorovic  Usati  and  Vasili  Ivanovic  Zabolot- 
ski-Braznik.  This  enterprise  is  described  in  detail  in  the  synchron- 
ous Russian  documents,  the  result  being  given  thus: 

The  military  chiefs  (voyevody}  slew  fifty  men  of  the  Samoyed l  on  the  rock,2 
and  captured  two  hundred  reindeer.  From  this  Rock  they  marched  for  a  week 
as  far  as  the  first  town,  L'apino,3  covering  altogether  465  verst  over  this  territory. 
Proceeding  from  L'apino,  they  met  the  Yugor  princes  who  came  on  reindeer 
from  Obdor;4  but  from  L'apino  the  [Russian]  military  chiefs  (voyevody}  traveled 
on  reindeer;  the  army,  however,  on  dogs. 

This  is  a  literal  translation,  and  in  the  spirit  of  the  Russian  language 
means  that  they  traveled  on  sledges  drawn  by  reindeer  and  dogs 
respectively.  The  same  verb,  sl'i  ("  they  went  "),  is  used  with 
the  reindeer  and  with  the  dogs  (na  olen'ax,  a  rat  na  sobakax) ;  and, 

1  The  land  cf  the  Samoyed,  under  the  name  Samoyad',  is  mentioned  as  early  as 
1096  in  the  chronicle  of  Nestor  as  being  situated  north  of  Yugra.     In  1246  their  name 
is  mentioned  by  Piano  Carpini,  who  styles  them  "Samogedes,"  and  ascribes  to  them 
dog-heads,  as  the  ancient  legend  of  the  KvvoKktpoiKoL  was  alive  in  his  day.     The  name 
may  be  related  to  Sameyadna,  which  the  Lapp  (in  Russian  Lop',  Lopari)  confer  on 
their  country. 

2  The  Rock  (Kamen'),  also  Rocky  Girdle  (Kamennyi  Poyas),  is  a  designation  of 
the  Ural,  in  accordance  with  the  Ostyak  term  keu,  kev  ("  stone,  mountain,  Ural  "). 
See  B.  Munkacsi,  Keleti  Szemle,  vol.  in  (1902),  p.  276. 

3  Small  place  (also  L'apina)  on  the  banks  of  the  Sygwa  in  the  district  (okrug) 
Berezov,  now  called  Vorulsk.     The  Sygwa  is  a  side-river  of  the  northern  Soswa, 
which  falls  into  the  Ob  not  far  from  Berezov. 

4  The  original  document  has  the  misprint  Odor.     The  question  is  of  Obdor  prov- 
ince (Obdorskaya  oblast')  on  the  lower  Ob.     The  settlement  Obdor  is  situated  not  far 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Ob.     According  to  A.  Castren,  Reiseerinnerungen  aus  den 
Jahren  1838-1844,  p.  279,  who  has  given  a  very  interesting  description  of  the  place, 
this  name  should  be  of  Syryan  origin,  meaning  "mouth  of  the  Ob."  -  An  account  of 
Berezov  and  Obdorsk  is  found  also  in  P.  S.  Pallas,  Reii>e  durch  verschiedene  Provinzen 
des  russischen  Reichs,  vol.  in,  pp.  17-24.     Reindeer  are  still  kept  in  this  region. 


9§  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

since  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  the  soldiers  rode  astride  dogs, 
it  is  equally  out  of  the  question  that  riding  on  reindeer  is  under- 
stood.1 The  Samoyed  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  this 
affair;  the  Russian  documents  of  that  period  clearly  distinguish 
between  Yugra  and  Samoyed,  and  the  situation  is  perfectly  clear. 
It  was  the  Yugor  (Yugrian,  Ugrian)  princes  (Yugorskie  kn'azi) 
who  were  in  possession  of  reindeer-sledges,  in  the  same  manner  as 
their  Wogul  descendants  are  at  the  present  time.  These  were 
duly  captured  by  their  Russian  conquerors  and  placed  at  the 
disposal  of  the  commanders  on  their  further  inroads  into  the 
Ugrian  territory,  while  the  soldiers  were  transported  on  dog- 

1  The  Russian  text  is  by  no  means  ambiguous.  If  the  Russian  writer  meant  to 
express  "riding,"  he  would  have  used  the  verb  yaxat'  verxom.  The  usual  question 
addressed  to  the  winter  traveler  in  Siberia  on  his  arrival  is,  "In  what  way  did  you 
come?  "  which  is  answered  by  such  phrases  as,  "  On  horses  "  (na  losad'ax  or  kon'ax), 
"  On  dogs  "  (na  sobakax),  "  On  reindeer  "  (na  olen'ax}]  and  it  is  perfectly  understood 
that  he  traveled  on  a  sledge  drawn  by  horses,  dogs,  or  reindeer.  In  the  same  manner 
Avril,  Travels  into  Divers  Parts  of  Europe  and  Asia  (London,  1693),  p.  161,  says  in 
regard  to  the  Samoyed  that  "they  travel  upon  harts  and  dogs."  The  text  of  Lehr- 
berg  (in  the  Russian  translation,  p.  14)  is  quite  clear.  "Iz  L'apina  na  vstr'acu  Russk'im 
v'axali  Yugorskiye  kn'az'ya  na  olen'ax.  L'apino  zavoyevano,  i  ot  s'uda  voisko 
poslo  dal'aye,  voyevody  na  olen'ax,  a  procie  na  san'ax,  zapr'azennyx  sobakam'i." 
Lehrberg  comments  in  a  note  that  traveling  with  dogs  was  in  full  swing  on  the  Irtysh 
as  early  as  1580,  and  is  still  practised  in  northwestern  Siberia,  horses  not  being  kept 
under  62°  N.  lat.;  that  formerly  also  west  of  the  Ural  in  Perm  dogs  were  employed 
for  transportation,  in  more  ancient  times  even  farther  west  along  the  Baltic  Sea, 
as  shown  by  the  Esthonian  and  Finnish  phrase  for  "mile,"  penni  koorm,  penicuorma 
(literally,  "  dog-load  ").  Karamzin  (Istoriya  gosudarstva  rossiskago,  St.  Petersburg, 
1819,  vol.  vi,  p.  286),  the  eminent  Russian  historian,  has  interpreted  the  document  in 
the  same  manner  by  saying,  "Each  of  these  princes  sat  in  a  long  sledge  drawn  by  rein- 
deer. The  voyevody  of  John  likewise  drove  on  reindeer  (ydxali  na  olen'ax),  but  the 
soldiers  on  dogs  (na  sobakax),  holding  in  their  hands  fire  and  sword  for  the  annihilation 
of  the  poor  inhabitants."  Regarding  the  Russian  expedition  of  1499  see  also  Sjogren, 
Gesammelte  Schriften,  vol.  l,  p.  309;  and  Aleksandra  Dmitrieva,  "Pokorenie  ugorskix 
zemel'i  Sibiri,"  pp;  87  el  teq.,  Permskaya  Starina  (Perm,  1894),  no.  v.  In  A.  Rambaud's 
Histo/y  of  Russia  (Boston,  1886),  vol.  i,  p.  221,  this  event  is  thus  narrated:  "In  1499 
the  voyevodi  of  Ustiug,  of  the  Dwina,  and  of  Viatka  advanced  as  far  as  the  Petchora, 
and  built  a  fortress  on  the  banks  of  the  river.  In  the  depth  of  winter,  in  sledges 
drawn  by  dogs,  they  passed  the  defiles  of  the  Urals,  in  the  teeth  of  the  wind  and  snow, 
slew  fifty  of  the  Samoyedi,  and  captured  two  hundred  reindeer;  invaded  the  territory 
of  the  Voguli  and  Ugrians,  the  Finnish  brethren  of  the  Magyars;  took  forty  enclosures 
of  palisades,  made  fifty  princes  prisoners,  and  returned  to  Moscow,  after  having  re- 
duced this  unknown  country."  Here  the  transportation  on  reindeer-sleighs  as  too  un- 
important or  troublesome  to  the  historian  has  been  passed  over  in  silence, — a  curious 
example  of  history-writing. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  99 

sleighs.  Let  us  hope  that  "  the  reindeer-riding  Samoyed  of  1499  " 
will  thus  remain  buried  never  to  rise  again.  The  document  quoted 
is  of  importance,  for  it  shows  us  that  the  Uralic  Ugrians  were 
acquainted  with  the  domesticated  reindeer  as  a  draught  animal 
toward  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  In  regard  to  the  Samoyed, 
we  can  assert  on  the  basis  of  this  account  only  that  reindeer  were 
kept  by  them. 

When  Baron  Sigismund  von  Herberstein  was  ambassador  from 
the  Emperor  Maximilian  to  the  Grand  Prince  Vasili  Ivanovic  of 
Muscovy  in  the  years  1517  and  1526,  he  met  at  the  Court  of  this 
Prince  in  Moscow  his  interpreter,  Gregory  Istoma,  who  in  1496 
had  been  sent  by  the  Prince  to  the  Court  of  King  John  of  Den- 
mark, where  he  acquired  the  Latin  language.  He  gave  Herberstein 
an  account  of  his  journey,  which  had  taken  him  over  Great  Nov- 
gorod to  the  mouths  of  the  Dvina  and  Potivlo.  There  the  party 
embarked  in  four  boats,  and  sailed  along  the  right-hand  shore  of 
the  ocean;  and  after  accomplishing  sixteen  miles  and  crossing  a 
certain  gulf,  they  sailed  along  the  left  shore.  Leaving  the  open 
sea  to  their  right,  they  came  to  the  people  of  Finlapeia.  Although 
these  people  dwell  in  low  cottages,  scattered  here  and  there  along 
the  seacoast,  and  lead  an  almost  savage  life,  Istoma  reported,  yet 
they  are  more  gentle  in  their  manners  than  the  wild  Laplanders. 
He  stated  that  they  were  tributary  to  the  Prince  of  Muscovy.  A 
voyage  of  eighty  miles,  after  leaving  the  land  of  the  Laplanders, 
brought  them  to  the  country  of  Nortpoden,  which  was  subject  to 
the  King  of  Sweden.  The  Russians  call  the  country  Kaienska 
Semla;  and  the  people,  Kaiemai.  After  having  passed  two  perilous 
promontories,  they  sailed  up  to  the  country  of  the  Ditciloppi, 
who  are  wild  Laplanders,  to  a  place  named  Dront  [Drontheim], 
two  hundred  miles  north  of  the  Dvina. 

They  then  left  their  boats  and  performed  the  rest  of  their  journey  by  land, 
in  sledges.  He  further  related  that  there  are  herds  of  deer  there,  as  plentiful 
as  oxen  are  with  us,  which  are  called  in  the  Norwegian  language  'rhen.'  They 
are  somewhat  larger  than  our  stags,  and  are  used  by  the  Laplanders  instead  of 
oxen,  and  in  the  following  manner:  they  yoke  the  deer  to  a  carriage  made  in  the 
form  of  a  fishing-boat,  in  which  the  man  is  bound  by  his  feet  lest  he  should  fall 
out  while  the  deer  is  at  full  speed;  in  his  left  hand  he  holds  a  bridle,  to  guide  the 


100  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

course  of  the  deer,  and  in  his  right  a  staff,  with  which  to  prevent  the  upsetting  of 
the  carriage,  if  it  should  happen  to  lean  too  much  on  either  side.  He  stated 
that,  by  this  mode  of  travelling,  he  himself  had  accomplished  twenty  miles  in 
one  day,  and  had  then  let  loose  the  deer;  which  returned  of  its  own  accord  to 
its  own  master  and  its  accustomed  home.  Having  at  length  accomplished  this 
journey,  they  came  to  Berges  [Bergen],  a  city  of  Norway,  quite  in  the  north, 
amongst  the  mountains,  and  then  reached  Denmark  on  horseback.1 

As  Herberstein's  narrative  is  based  on  the  report  of  Gregory 
Istoma,  whose  experience  dates  back  to  1496,  we  are  entitled  to  say 
that  the  Lapp  were  in  the  possession  of  sleigh-drawing  reindeer  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

Olaus  Magnus,  Archbishop  of  Upsala  and  Metropolitan  of 
Sweden,  who  died  in  1568,  published  in  Rome,  1555,  his  famous 
work  Historic,  de  gentium  septentrionalium  variis  conditionibus  ? 
where  a  somewhat  lengthy  and  fairly  correct  description  of  the 
reindeer  of  Lapland  is  given.  Certainly  he  is  not  the  first  author, 
as  asserted  by  Hahn,  who  told  Europeans  about  the  tame  rein- 
deer, as  Baron  von  Herberstein  .preceded  him  by  a  generation. 
Olaus'  account  is  not  based  on  personal  experience,  but  evidently 
draughted  from  hearsay.  The  English  naturalist  E.  Topsell3  then 
gave  a  description  based  on  Olaus,  and  justly  emphasized  that  the 
beast  was  altogether  unknown  to  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans. 

It  is  thus  shown  that  the  documentary  evidence  presented  by 
European  history  does  not  mention  the  domestic  reindeer  before 
the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth  century.  I  regret  not  having  access 
to  ancient  Russian  chronicles,  especially  those  of  Novgorod  and 
Archangelsk,  which  might  contain  facts  bearing  upon  the  problem. 
There  is  a  noteworthy  negative  evidence  presented  by  the  Kalewala, 
the  national  .epic  poem  of  the  Finn.  Here  we  have  a  true  picture 
of  the  primeval  cultural  conditions  in  which  the  Finn  lived  prior 
to  their  christianization  (A.D.  1151),  also  a  description  of  their 

1  Notes  upon  Russia:    being  a  Translation  of  the  Earliest  Account  of  that  Country, 
entitled  Rcrum  Moscoviticarum  Commentarii  by  the  Baron  Sigismund  von  Herberstein, 
translated  by  R.  H.  Major,  vol.  n,  pp.  105-108,  Hakluyt  Society. 

2  An  English  translation  appeared  in  1658  under  the  title  Compendious  History  of 
the  Goths,  Swedes,  and  Vandals,  and  Other  Northern  Nations.     His  description  of  the 
reindeer  is  on  p.  176.     Those  who  have  not  access  to  this  edition  may  be  referred  to 
E.  Phipson,  Animal-Lore  of  Shakespeare's  Time,  p.  123,  where  the  passage  is  extracted. 

3  Historic  of  Foure-Footed  Beastes  (1607),  p.  592. 


LAUFER 


THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION 


101 


relations  to  the  Lapp.  Sledge-driving  is  most  frequently  men- 
tioned, but  the  sledges  are  always  drawn  by  horses.  The  wild 
reindeer  was  an  object  of  the  hunt,  but  there  is  not  the  faintest 
allusion  to  reindeer  kept  in  captivity  under  the  control  of  man. 
The  period  of  this  ancient  Finnish  culture  is  difficult  to  gauge  by 
exact  dates,  but  it  is  generally  admitted  that  the  beginning  of  this 
national  poetry  falls  between  A.D.  800  and  Pooo.1  If  we  assume 
that  the  Lapp  adopted  the  domesticated  reinaeer  from  the  Samoyed 
during  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century,  we  shall  probably  not 
commit  too  great  an  error  of  calculation. 

Before  leaving  the  European  field,  it  should  be  remembered 
that  the  theory  of  a  Scandinavian  origin  of  reindeer  domestication 
has  also  been  propounded.  Its  main  champion  was  a  Norwegian 
scholar,  A.  Frijs.2  According  to  him,  the  Lapp  of  the  ninth  century 
were  not  yet  reindeer-nomads,  but  merely  hunters  and  fishermen, 
whose  only  domesticated  animal  was  the  dog.  The  domestication 
of  the  reindeer  they  learned  from  the  Scandinavians.  The  evidence 
for  this  bold  statement  is  based  on  philological  arguments:  it  is 
proved  by  the  language  of  the  Lapp,  for  only  the  dog  has  a  genuine 
Lapp  name ;  with  the  reception  of  the  other  domestic  animals,  the 
Lapp  adopted  also  their  designations;  the  Lapp  has  no  word  for 
"  taming,"  and  has  therefore  accepted  the  Scandinavian  word 
for  it.  It  is  generally  known  how  fallacious  such  play  with  alleged 
linguistic  evidence  is;  in  fact,  no  serious  scholar  any  longer  derives 
historical  conclusions  from  conditions  of  language.  Frijs  evi- 
dently traced  Lapp  raingo  ("  reindeer  ")  to  Scandinavian  hreinn, 
but  there  is  as  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  latter  is  based  on 
the  former.  In  fact,  no  lesser  scholar  than  Jacob  Grimm3  regards 
the  Lapp  word  as  the  foundation  of  the  Germanic  forms  (Anglo- 
Saxon  hrdn,  Old  Norse  hreinn,  Swedish  ren,  Danish  rensdyr,  German 
rein,  reiner,  renn).  Be  this  as  it  may,  neither  the  one  nor  the 

1 D.  Comparetti,  Kalewala,  p.  280  (authorized  translation  from  the  Italian). 
It  is  noteworthy  also  that  Tacitus  (Germania,  46),  in  his  notice  of  the  Fenni,  the 
oldest  account  of  some  Finno-Ugrian  tribe,  makes  no  mention  whatever  of  deer. 

2  Globus,  vol.  xxn  (1872),  p.  2,  translation  of  his  work  En  Sommer  i  Finmarken, 
Russisk  Lappland  og  Nordkarelen  (Kristiania,  1871). 

3  Deulsches  Worterbuch,  vol.  vii,  col.  2007. 


JO2  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

other  supposition  could  prove  that  the  domestication  is  due  to 
Scandinavians,  or  to  any  other  nation.  It  is  merely  indicative  of 
a  fact  of  language,  and  nothing  else. 

In  others,  the  theory  of  the  Scandinavian  origin  of  reindeer 
domestication  may  have  been  inspired  by  certain  efforts  in  Sweden 
to  tame  the  elk  (Alces  alces  or  Cervus  alces).  These,  however, 
belong  to  recent  times,  and  stories  relative  to  them  are  not  well 
substantiated  by  historical  records.  Although  Louis  Figuier,  in 
his  Mammalia,  asserts  that  in  Sweden  for  two  or  three  centuries 
the  elk  was  used  in  the  harness,  but  that  the  custom  is  now  given 
up,  the  objection  has  justly  been  raised  by  J.  D.  Caton1  that  it  is 
difficult  to  understand  why  this  alleged  domestication  was  aban- 
doned in  a  country  so  well  adapted  to  its  use.  Sporadic  cases  of 
training  elks  to  harness  may  formerly  have  occurred  in  Sweden; 
but  no  general  attempt  to  tame  the  animal,  and  certainly  no 
"  domestication  "  of  it,  has  ever  taken  place. 

As  a  consequence  of  geographical  conditions,  the  Chinese  were 
far  removed  from  reindeer-breeding  localities;  and  for  this  reason 
we  cannot  expect  to  find  in  their  records  any  coherent  and  compre- 
hensive accounts,  which  would  permit  us  to  elaborate  an  intelligent 
history  of  the  domestication.  The  expansion  of  their  political 
power  and  the  extension  of  their  influence  over  neighboring  tribes, 
however,  enabled  the  Chinese  occasionally  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
curious  animal;  and  for  lack  of  any  other  sources,  their  casual 
mentions  of  it  are  of  capital  importance,  and  at  the  same  time 
represent  the  oldest  extant  references  to  the  reindeer. 

A  very  curious  allusion  to  reindeer  occurs  in  the  Annals  of  the 
Liang  dynasty  in  the  description  of  the  mythical  country  Fu-sang.2 
In  A.D.  499  the  Buddhist  monk  Huei  Shen  returned  to  King-chou, 
the  capital  of  the  Liang,  and  gave  a  fabulous  account  of  Fu-sang, 
alleged  to  have  been  situated  far  off  in  the  northeastern  ocean. 
As  to  means  of  conveyance,  he  reported,  the  people  there  have 
vehicles  drawn  by  horses,  oxen,  and  stags;  they  raise  deer  in  the 

1  The  Antelope  and  Deer  in  America,  p.  278. 

2  Liang  shu,  ch.  54,  p.  12.     This  work  was  compiled  by  Yao  Se-lien  in  the  first 
half  of  the  seventh  century  from  documents  of  the  Liang  dynasty,  which  ruled  from 
A.D.  502  to  556. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  1 03 

manner  as  oxen  are  reared  in  China,  and  make  cream1  from  their 
milk.  The  allusion  to  the  reindeer  is  unmistakable:  they  are 
plainly  described  as  being  kept  in  the  state  of  domesticity  for  the 
purpose  of  drawing  vehicles  (that  is,  sledges)  and  for  milk-con- 
sumption. Such  an  economic  condition,  as  described  in  this  text — 
the  simultaneous  breeding  of  horse,  cattle,  and  reindeer — is  not 
found,  however,  in  any  region  of  the  northern  Pacific;  and  if  Fu- 
sang  has  been  identified  with  America  by  some  fantasists,  the 
fact  remains  that  neither  the  domestic  horse  nor  cattle  nor  rein- 
deer ever  existed  in  pre-Columbian  America.  Nor  are  these  con- 
ditions applicable  to  the  Island  of  Saghalin,  which  Schlegel  put  on  a 
par  with  the  Fu-sang  country  of  the  Chinese  account:  horse  and 
cattle  were  introduced  there  only  by  the  Russian  settlers  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century;  and  the  reindeer,  as  already 
shown  by  L.  von  Schrenck,  is  there  likewise  a  recent  introduction 
going  back  to  a  few  centuries.  We  do  not  even  know  whether 
Saghalin  was  populated  at  all  in  the  fifth  century.  Neither  can 
any  Tungusian  tribe  come  into  question,  since  the  Tungus  employ 
the  reindeer  only  as  a  beast  of  burden  and  for  riding-purposes,  but 
rarely  for  drawing  sledges.  The  Fu-sang  account  is  a  fantastic 
concoction,  devoid  of  any  geographical  value,  pieced  together  from 
heterogeneous  elements  emanating  from  different  sources  and 
quarters.  While  each  of  these  elements  bears  a  germ  of  truth, 
their  combination  makes  an  unreal  picture.  The  breeding  of 
horse,  cattle,  and  reindeer  combined,  in  reality,  occurs  only  in  the  , 
Baikal  region,  particularly  among  the  present  Soyot;  and  Huei 
Shen's  account  of  the  reindeer  in  connection  with  horse  and  cattle 
has  doubtless  hailed  from  that  quarter.  The  ethnic  and  economic 

1  The  Chinese  term  lo  62  denotes  any  dairy  products,  as  cream,  butter,  cheese, 
sour  or  fermented  milk.  The  former  translators  of  this  text  have  made  a  liberal  choice 
without  being  concerned  about  what  products  are  actually  made  of  reindeer-milk. 
Bretschneider  had  butter  made  from  reindeer-milk,  but  butter  is  never  produced  from 
it  by  any  East-Siberian  tribe.  Schlegel  (T'oung  Pao,  vol.  in  (1892),  p.  123)  decided 
on  a  fermented  liquor,  but  such  is  never  made.  In  fact,  reindeer-milk  is  not  made 
into  any  product  in  northern  Asia,  but  is  consumed  as  it  is,  in  its  natural  state,  as  a 
fatty,  creamy  substance.  S.  W.  Williams  (Journal  American  Oriental  Society,  vol.  xi, 
(1882),  p.  93)  therefore  was  quite  right  in  translating,  "and  make  cream  of  their 
milk." 


104  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

condition  of  this  locality,  which  is  of  paramount  importance  for  the 
history  of  reindeer  domestication,  will  be  fully  discussed  hereafter. 
Before  mentioning  the  three  kinds  of  vehicles  used  in  Fu-sang, 
Huei  Shen  speaks  also  of  a  peculiar  breed  of  oxen  with  very  long 
horns.  According  to  Williams,  the  horns  were  so  long  that  they 
would  hold  things — the  biggest  as  much  as  five  pecks.  According 
to  Schlegel,  the  oxen  could  carry  on  their  horns  loads  weighing  up 
to  twenty  quintals.1  Schlegel2  thinks  also  that  the  reindeer  is 
intended  by  this  ox,  but  it  is  improbable  that  Huei  Shen  would 
first  designate  the  reindeer  as  an  ox  and  in  the  following  sentence 
describe  it  as  a  deer.  Further,  loads  are  never  placed  on  the  rein- 
deer's antlers;  and  it  is  equally  inconceivable  that  loads  were  ever 
packed  on  the  horns  of  an  ox.3 

1  The  passage  is  not  very  clearly  worded,  and  the  text  presumably  is  corrupted. 
In  all  probability,  it  means  that  the  people  used  these  horns  for  carrying  loads  in 
them,  the  horns  holding  up  to  twenty  corns  (hu  jty ,  a  measure  of  capacity). 

2  L.  c.,  p.  142. 

3  There  are  several  other  misconceptions  in  Schlegel's  discussion  of  the  subject. 
The  Manchu  term  kandahan  refers  to  the  elk  only,  not  to  the  reindeer.     The  Tungusian 
name  for  the  "  reindeer,"  oron,  has  no  connection  with  Russian  olen',  or  -vice  versa,  as 
asserted  by  Schlegel.     Russian  olen'  is  an  old  Indo-European  word  connected  with 
Lithuanian  elnis-,  alms;  Lettic  alnis,  Old  Prussian  alne,  German  elen,  Greek  eXa<£os 
(from  *eln-bhos)  and  eXXos  (from  *elnos,  "  young  hart  ");  Armenian  eln  (doe);  Cymric 
elain  (doe).     The  Russians,  according  to  Schlegel,  do  not  discriminate  between  "  stag  " 
and  "  reindeer,"  and  call  both  indifferently  olen'.     Russian  olen',  however,  is  the 
general  term  for  cervus,  and  the  reindeer  is  properly  s'dverni  olen'  (northern  deer), 
abbreviated  into  olen'  when  so  understood  from  the  context. — Neither  H.  C.  von 
der  Gabelentz  nor  Zacharov,  in  their  Manchu  dictionaries,  have  noted  a  word  for 
the  reindeer.     Such,  nevertheless,  exists,  though  it  is  doubtless  a  loan-word  from 
Tungusian.     The  Ts'ing  wen  hui  shu  (in  Manchu:  Manju  isabuha  bithe,  ch.  i,  p.  46), 
a  Manchu-Chinese  dictionary  published  in  1751  by  Li  Yen-ki,  records  the  well-known 
Tungusian  term  oron  as  the  Manchu  designation  for  the  reindeer,  giving  in  Chinese 
the  definition,  "  name  of  a  cervine  animal,  antlers  growing  on  the  heads  of  both  male 
and  female,  subsisting  on  moss,  and  raised  by  the  deer-hunters."     The  same  lexico- 
grapher notes  oronggo  in  the  sense  of  "  deer-hunter  "  (the  same  word  signifies  other- 
wise a  wild  sheep  with  long  and  flat  horns,  resembling  the  "  yellow  sheep,"  Antilope 
gutturosa;  in  this  sense  the  word  appears  also  in  Mongol)  and  the  tribal  name  Oronco-i 
niyalma.     It  is  not  probable  that  Manchu  oron  (domesticated  reindeer)  and  iren 
(wild  reindeer)  are  interrelated  words,  as  proposed  by  W.  Schott  ("  Ueber  das  altaische 
Sprachengeschlecht,"  Abhandlungen  Berliner  Akademie  (1847),  p.  366);  for  Manchu 
iren  is  related  to  the  Tungusian  forms  him  and  siru  (below  the  Ussuri)  and  iru  (above 
the  Ussuri),  in  other  Tungusian  dialects  also  hirun,  ira  (W.  Grube,  Goldisches  Worter- 
verzeichnis,  p.  54).     Neither  is  there  any  likelihood  that,  as  supposed  by  'Schott, 
there  is  interrelation  of  Manchu  oron  and  Lapp  ronco  or  ronca  (male  reindeer),  in 
which  the  initial  vowel  should  have  been  eliminated. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  1 05 

The  Annals  of  the  T'ang  Dynasty  (618-906)  contain  an  inter- 
esting notice  of  a  reindeer-breeding  tribe,  the  Wu-huan,  then 
settled  in  a  region  east  or  southeast  of  Lake  Baikal.  This  notice 
runs  as  follows: 

The  Wu-huan  Jjj  $d  or  Ku-huan  ~&  ;jtl  ,  also  styled  Kii  |ij  or  Kiai  $$, , 
live  in  the  northeast  of  the  Pa-ye-ku  •fX;£Ti5  (Bayirku).  In  their  country 
there  are  trees,  but  grass  is  lacking,  while  there  is  plenty  of  moss.  The  inhabitants 
have  neither  sheep  nor  horses,  but  keep  reindeer  (stags)  in  the  manner  of  cattle 
or  horses.  These  animals  subsist  only  on  moss.  They  are  trained  to  drawing 
sledges  (carts).  Reindeer-skins,  moreover,  are  utilized  as  material  for  clothing.1 

In  the  T'ang  hui  yao 2  this  text  is  worded  as  follows : 

Traveling  for  six  days  in  a  north-easterly  direction  from  this  country  (Pa- 
ye-ku),  one  arrives  in  the  country  Kii,  where  there  are  trees,  but  no  grass.  While 
sheep  and  horses  are  absent,  there  are  reindeer.  In  like  manner  as  cattle  and 
horses  are  employed  in  China,  the  reindeer  are  used  there  for  drawing  sledges, 
which  are  capable  of  carrying  three  or  four  persons.  The  people  clothe  them« 
selves  with  reindeer-skin.  The  reindeer  subsists  on  the  moss  of  the  soil. 

The  fact  that  in  these  texts  the  reindeer  is  spoken  of  as  a  domestic 
animal  is  well  attested  by  the  use  of  the  verb  huan  ^  ("to  feed 
domestic  animals  with  grain  ")  and  by  the  peculiar  employment 
of  the  animals  in  the  service  of  man.  The  T'ung  tien*  written  by 
Tu  Yu  (A.D.  735-812)  between  the  years  766  and  801,  with  refer- 
ence to  the  Wu-huan,  employs  straightway  the  term  "  domesti- 
cated stag  "  (kia  ch'u  lu  'JjH  §? /jj?). 

The  history  of  the  Wu-huan  is -well  known  from  the  Chinese 
Annals.4  In  the  time  of  their  early  history  we  hear  nothing  to  the 
effect  that  they  kept  reindeer.  Their  domestic  animals  were  cattle, 
horses,  sheep,  and  dogs.  In  the  beginning  of  the  Han  dynasty 
(about  200  B.C.)  they  were  broken  up  by  the  Hiung-nu,  who  are 
usually  regarded  as  identical  with  the  Huns,  and,  while  subject  to 
the  latter,  paid  their  annual  tribute  in  cattle,  horses,  and  sheep. 

1  T'ang  &hu,  ch.  217  B,  pp.  7a-b. 

2  Ch.  98,  p.  i6b.       This  work  was  written  by  Wang  P'u,  and  completed  in  A.D. 
961. 

3  Ch.  199,  p.  i8b. 

4  See  Visdelou  in  D'Herbelot,  Bibliotheque  orientale  (La  Haye,  1779),  vol.  ivt 
pp.  79-86  ;  E.  H.  Parker,    "  History  of  the  Wu-wan  or  Wu-hwan  Tunguses  of  the 
First  Century,"  China  Review,  vol.  xx,  pp.  71-100,  and  A  Thousand  Years  of  the 
Tartars,  pp.  117-125. 


106  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

They  were  pastoral  nomads,  roaming  about  with  their  herds  wher- 
ever there  was  grass  and  water;  tents,  always  faced  toward  the 
east,  formed  their  habitations.  Each  man,  from  the  chieftain 
downward,  possessed  his  own  flocks  and  managed  his  own  property, 
nobody  serving  another.  They  were  skilful  horsemen  and  archers, 
given  to  hunting.  Flesh  and  dairy  products  were  their  chief  means 
of  subsistence;  in  a  small  measure  they  also  grew  millet.  Their 
garments  were  made  from  bird's  down,  though  they  understood  the 
preparation  of  leather  and  felt.  According  to  the  Chinese  system 
of  classification,  the  Wu-huan  were  counted  among  the  Tung  Hu 
(Eastern  Hu  or  Barbarians),  which  term  has  without  any  reason 
been  identified  with  "  Tungus."1 

There  is  no  wonder  that  the  early  Wu-huan  had  no  reindeer, 
for  in  their  habitat  this  animal  did  not  occur.  They  were  first 
settled  in  southern  Manchuria,  and  after  the  Chinese  victories 
over  the  Hiung-nu  in  120  B.C.,  were  transplanted  by  the  Emperor 
Wu  into  what  is  now  the  northern  part  of  Chi-li  Province  and  Liao- 
tung,  in  order  to  serve  as  a  sort  of  buffer-state  between  China  and 
the  Hiung-nu.  Skilled  horsemen,  they  were  organized  into  cavalry 
squadrons.  From  this  time  onward  that  tribe  did  not  play  any 
important  role  in  history.  In  A.D.  207  they  were  decisively 
defeated  by  Ts'ao  Ts'ao  at  Liu-ch'eng.  It  is  somewhat  surprising 
to  meet  them  in  the  T'ang  period  (618-906)  in  a  new  geographical 
environment  as  northeastern  neighbors  of  the  Bayirku,  a  branch 
of  the  Turkish  Uigur,  and  in  the  entirely  new  economic  condition 

1  This  theory  belongs  to  the  category  of  paper  etymologies.  Phonetically  there 
is  not  a  shadow  of  a  coincidence  between  Chinese  Tung  Hu  and  Tungus,  except  the 
initial  consonants.  The  word  "  Tungus,"  about  the  antiquity  of  which  nothing  is 
known,  would  never  have  been  transcribed  by  the  Chinese  in  that  manner.  First, 
it  is  used  at  present  only  by  a  few  clans  of  Tungusian  tribes,  and  by  just  those  who  are 
so  remote  from  China,  that  it  may  well  be  doubted  that  they  were  ever  in  contact 
with  her.  Secondly,  the  word  written  by  us  "  Tungus  "  is  pronounced  by  the  natives 
claiming  this  name  To-nus,  as  noted  by  myself  in  Siberia.  There  is  neither  a  g  nor 
an  h  in  it,  and  the  guttural  nasal  opens  the  second  syllable  bearing  the  accent.  The 
Chinese,  accordingly,  should  they  have  had  occasion  to  hear  this  name,  would  have 
transcribed  it  To-nu  (ngu),  or  To-fiu-se.  The  Chinese  term  Hu  is  applied  to  many 
other  peoples  also,  especially  the  Iranians  of  Central  Asia,  and  even  to  India.  Klaproth 
(Tableaux  historiques  de  VAsie,  p.  83)  has  already  observed  with  correct  instinct  that 
it  appears  not  very  probable  that  the  name  "  Tungus  "  is  derived  from  Chinese  Tung 
Hu. 


LAUFER]  THE  REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  IO/ 

of  reindeer-breeders,  as  which  they  do  not  appear  in  any  earlier 
period.  This  branch  of  the  Wu-huan  appears  to  have  been  a 
scattered  horde,  which  had  remained  in  its  ancient  seats,  and  was 
driven  thence  farther  to  the  west,  presumably  as  far  as  the  country 
east  or  southeast  from  Lake  Baikal,  where  the  natural  conditions 
for  the  maintenance  of  reindeer  prevail.  In  all  probability,  they 
struck  there  a  tribe  which  had  already  domesticated  the  reindeer; 
for  Huei  Shen's  report  has  shown  us  that  the  domestication  must 
have  been  an, accomplished  fact  in  the  fifth  century.  At  any  rate, 
there  is  no  valid  reason  for  crediting  the  Wu-huan  with  the  initiative 
or  with  any  originality  in  this  enterprise.  They  were  originally 
horsemen  and  cattle-breeders;  and  when  they  drifted  into  their 
new  domicile,  they  adopted  what  they  found,  adapting  themselves 
to  this  novel  economy. 

Marco  Polo l  speaks  of  a  tribe  called  by  him  Mescript,  and 
identified  by  Yule  with  the  Merkit  in  the  country  of  Bargu,  near 
Lake  Baikal: 

They  are  a  very  wild  race,  and  live  by  their  cattle,  the  most  of  which  are 
stags  and  these  stags,  I  assure  you,  they  used  to  ride  upon. 

Certainly  this  is  the  reindeer.  Yule  is  inclined  to  think  that 
Marco  embraces  under  this  tribal  name  in  question  characteristics 
belonging  to  tribes  extending  far  beyond  the  Mekrit,  and  which 
in  fact  are  appropriate  to  the  Tungus;  and  continues  that  Rashid- 
eddin  seems  to  describe  the  latter  under  the  name  of  Uriangkut 
of  the  Woods,  a  people  dwelling  beyond  the  frontier  of  Barguchin, 
and  in  connection  with  whom  he  speaks  of  their  reindeer  obscurely, 
as  well  as  of  their  tents  of  birchbark,  and  their  hunting  on  snow- 
shoes.  As  W.  Radloff2  has  endeavored  to  show,  the  Woodland 
Uryangkit,  in  this  form  mentioned  by  Rashid-eddin,  should  be 
looked  upon  as  the  forefathers  of  the  present  Yakut.  Rashid- 
eddin,  further,  speaks  of  other  Uryangkit,  who  are  genuine  Mongols, 
and  live  close  together  in  the  territory  Barguchin  Tukum,  where 
the  clans  Khori,  Bargut,  and  Tumat,  are  settled.  This  region  is 

1  Yule  and  Cordier,  The  Book  of  Ser  Marco  Polo,  vol.  I,  p.  269. 

2  "  Die  jakutische  Sprache,"  Memoires  de  I' Academic  des  Sciences  de  St.-Peters- 
bourg  (1908),  pp.  54-56. 


IO8  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

east  of  Lake  Baikal,  which  receives  the  river  Barguchin  flowing 
out  of  Lake  Bargu  in  an  easterly  direction.  The  tribal  name 
Bargut  (-t  being  the  termination  of  the  plural)  is  surely  connected 
with  the  name  of  the  said  river.  The  Persian  historian  Rashid- 
eddm,  in  his  history  of  the  Mongols  written  in  1302,  speaks  of  a 
tribe  styled  Woodland  Uryangkit  living  in  forests  northeast  of 
Lake  Baikal.1  Their  clothing  consisted  of  animal  skins.  Cattle 
and  sheep  were  not  reared  by  them,  but  in  place  of  sheep  and  cattle 
they  kept  mountain-oxen  (gawi  kohl),  mountain-sheep  (mis),  and 
jur  (Saiga  antelope).  They  tamed  these  animals,  milked  them, 
and  consumed  this  milk.  During  their  peregrinations  they  loaded 
the  mountain-oxen,  but  never  quitted  their  forests.  Wherever 
they  stopped,  they  made  huts  and  yurts  of  birchbark.  Rashid- 
eddin,  further,  narrates  how  they  bored  the  birches  and  drank  the 
birch-juice,  and  how  they  hunted  in  the  winter  on  snowshoes, 
employing  snow-sticks,  and  dragging  along  the  spoils  of  the  chase 
on  sleighs.  This  text  is  very  interesting,2  but  the  Persian  author's 
description  of  the  domestic  animals  is  by  no  means  clear.  Radloff 
infers  that  he  alludes  to  a  reindeer-breeding  hunting-tribe,  but  he 
fails  to  inform  us  by  which  of  the  three  animals  named  in  the  text 
he  wishes  to  have  the  reindeer  understood.  It  might  not  be  im- 
possible that  the  latter  may  be  hidden  under  the  mountain-ox;  the 
Scandinavians  and  Lapp,  for  instance,  apply  terms  like  "ox," 
"  cow,"  and  "  calf  "  to  the  reindeer.3  On  the  other  hand,  how- 
ever, as  the  tame  yak  occurs  in  the  Baikal  region,  and  particularly 
among  the  Uryankhai,  the  descendants  of  Rashid-eddin's  Uryankit,4 

1  In  another  passage  of  his  work,  Rashid-eddln  states  that  the  designation  "  wood- 
land peoples  "  is  meant  in  contradistinction  to  peoples  inhabiting  the  steppe;  but 
there  are  many  kinds  of  forest  peoples,  because  one  or  another  yurt  of  almost  every 
tribe  is  in  the  vicinity  of  a  forest,  and  because  some  tribes  are  distant  from  forests  a 
month's  journey,  others  two  months'  journey,  others  again  only  a  day's  journey. 

2  It  has  frequently  been  translated:   d'Ohsson,  Histoire  des  Mongols,  vol.  i,  pp.  9, 
421;   F.   von  Erdmann,    Ueber^icht  der   Volkerstamme  nach  Raschid-ud-din   (Kazan, 
1841),  p.  124,  and  Temudschin,  p.  191;  Berezin,  Istoriya  Mongolov,  socinenie  Rashid- 
eddina,  pp.  90,  141;  Radloff,  1.  c.,  p.  54  (revised  edition  of  the  text  reprinted  by  Sale- 
mann,  p.  84). 

3  Finnish  hdrka  and  Lapp  herke  mean  "  ox,"  and  are  applied  to  the  tame  reindeer. 

4  In  the  high  mountainous  portions  of  the  eastern  Sayan,  cattle  are  reared  in  a 
few  specimens  by  the  Soyot  up  to  an  altitude  of  from  five  to  six  thousand  feet,  but 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION 

it  may  be  permissible  to  think  of  the  yak  as  well.  There  remain 
the  sheep  and  ihejur.  The  latter  is  a  Mongol  word  (dsur)  referring 
to  the  Saiga  antelope.  That  this  animal  might  be  tamed  and  kept 
in  captivity  I  do  not  doubt,  but  that  it  has  actually  been  done  in 
the  region  in  question  is  not  known  to  me.  It  is  not  plausible, 
either,  that  Rashid-eddin  should  avail  himself,  for  the  designation 
of  the  domestic  reindeer,  of  a  Mongol  term,  which  strictly  denotes  a 
wild  beast.  Thus  the  word  "  sheep  "  (mis)  would  be  the  last 
resort  for  the  reindeer  interpretation.1  The  fact  that  it  is  not  an 
ordinary  sheep  becomes  evident  from  the  assertion  that  this  people 
does  not  rear  sheep.  Rashid-eddin  obviously  speaks  from  hearsay, 
without  entertaining  correct  notions  of  the  matter,  and  his  terms 
are  evidently  chosen  in  a  state  of  embarrassment.  If  we  are 
allowed  to  read  from  his  text  that  he  describes  a  reindeer-breeding 
people,  it  is  less  his  obscure  nomenclature  that  justifies  us  in  this 
conclusion  than  the  facts  that  also  contemporaneous  Chinese 
records  and  Marco  Polo  know  of  reindeer  in  this  region,  and  that 
these  still  exist  there  at  the  present  time,  together  with  yak  and 
horse. 

There  is  another,  ethnographical  reason,  which  for  a  long  time 
caused  me  to  hesitate  to  believe  in  Rashid-eddin's  reindeer.  Rad- 
loff  regards  this  writer's  Woodland  Uryangkit  as  the  ancestors  of 
the  modern  Yakut,  chiefly  on  the  ground  that  a  former  appellative 
of  the  Yakut  was  Urangkhai  (Urangxai)  Sakha ;  and  he  looks  upon 
Urangkhai  as  the  original  tribal  name  of  the  Yakut.  Now,  accord- 
ing to  Radloff,  the  Woodland  Uryangkit  were  a  typically  reindeer 
tribe;  the  Yakut,  however,  are  not. 

If,   accordingly,   RadlofFs  theory  of  a  connection  of  Rashid- 

southward  among  the  Uryankhai  and  Darkhat  they  are  frequently  replaced  by  Bos 
grunniens  and  its  bastard  forms  with  the  d<^«tic  cattle,  the  so-called  khailuk.  The 
Buryat  prefer  the  latter  to  Bos  grunniens,  which  is  known  to  them  through  the  Uryan- 
khai. Among  these  Soyot,  as  it^^ardly  occurs  otherwise  in  the  south  of  eastern 
Siberia,  the  domestic  ox  is  found,  together  with  reindeer  and  horse;  the  reindeer,  how- 
ever, remains  for  them  the  m6st  important  of  the  three  domesticated  animals.  G. 
Radde,  Reise  im  Stiden  von  Ost-Sibirien,  vol.  I,  Sdugetier-fauna  (St.  Petersburg, 
1862),  p.  270. 

1  In  the  language  of  the  Koibal,  the  reindeer  is  styled  "  white  goat  "  (ak  klk), 
according  to  A.  Castren,  Koibalische  Sprachlehre,  p.  75. 


HO  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL   ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

eddin's  Uryangkit  with  the  present  Yakut  be  correct,  we  are  con- 
fronted with  a  fundamental  contrast  between  the  cultures  of  the 
two  peoples.  The  Uryangkit  are  supposed  to  have  been  active 
reindeer-breeders,  milking  the  animals,  and  subsisting  on  their 
milk;  while  the  Yakut  do  not  milk  them  at  all,  and  look  upon  the 
whole  business  as  an  incidental  affair  of  their  life  and  as  a  foreign 
invasion.  This  contradiction  has  escaped  Radloff,  but  attention 
should  be  called  to  this  anomaly.  In  their  present  condition,  the 
Yakut  have  lived  at  least  since  the  seventeenth  century,  when  the 
Russians  first  became  acquainted  with  them.  Rashid-eddin  wrote 
in  1302,  so  that  the  transition,  if  it  took  place,  must  have  been  the 
outcome  of  some  three  centuries;  but  this  would  be  difficult  to 
accept.  In  all  probability,  we  shall  have  to  interpret  the  events 
somewhat  differently.  While  part  of  the  Uryangkit  may  have  been 
absorbed  by  the  Yakut,  this  process  need  not  be  invoked  to  explain 
the  entire  ethnic  composition  of  the  Yakut.  It  was  merely  one  of 
the  political  events  that  tended  to  contribute  to  the  formation  of 
this  now  powerful  tribe,  but  currents  from  other  directions  as  well 
have  had  their  share  in  its  ultimate  organization. 

Among  the  Yakut,  now  numbering  about  two  hundred  thousand, 
the  reindeer  represents  a  secondary  acquisition,  which  they  received 
from  the  Tungus.  This  borrowing  is  upheld  by  the  traditions  of 
the  Yakut  themselves,  who  assert  that  the  Tungus  are  acquainted 
with  no  other  domestic  beast  than  the  reindeer,  and  that  the  latter 
is  the  truly  Tungusian  cattle,  which  for  this  reason  they  style 
"  foreign  cattle."1  This  fact  is  brought  out  by  the  very  conditions 
obtaining  among  the  Yakut  in  regard  to  the  reindeer.  The  Yakut 
are  not  a  people  of  nomadic  habits,  but  lead  a  sedentary  life,  based 
chiefly  on  the  maintenance  of  cattle  and  horses,  on  agriculture  and 
fishery.  Reindeer  take  only  an  insignificant  share  in  their  culture, 
and  are  kept  but  reluctantly,  mainly  in  the  northern  districts  of  the 
province  of  Yakutsk.  Reindeer-breeders,  as  are  found  among  the 
Tungus,  Chukchi,  and  Samoyed,  do  not  exist  in  their  midst.  They 
merely  keep  small  herds,  mainly  utilized  for  driving  or  as  pack- 
animals.  Solely  among  the  Dolgan  of  Turukhansk,  who  have 

1  V.  L.  S'arosevski,  The  Yakut  (in  Russian),  vol.  I,  pp.  146,  307. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS   DOMESTICATION  III 

adopted  the  Tungus  practice  of  nomadism,  is  the  reindeer  the 
exclusive  domestic  animal.  The  most  curious  fact  is  that  the 
Yakut  do  not  milk  their  reindeer  at  all,  and  slaughter  it  on  rare 
occasions  only,  so  that  no  reindeer  meat  is  for  sale  among  them. 
Their  aversion  toward  nomadic  life,  and  their  habit  of  living  in 
blockhouses,  impose  many  restrictions  on  the  keeping  of  reindeer, 
which  without  any  doubt  they  adopted  from  Tungusian  tribes.1 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  during  the  Mongol 
period  (thirteenth  century)  the  reindeer  was  kept  in  a  state  of 
domesticity  in  the  Baikal  region.  We  have  excellent  testimony 
to  this  effect  in  the  Chinese  Annals  of  the  Mongol  Dynasty.2  Here 
mention  is  made  of  the  Kirgiz  on  the  upper  Yenisei,  and,  in  con- 
nection with  them,  of  five  smaller  territories,  apparently  inhabited 
likewise  by  Kirgiz.  One  of  these  is  styled  Han-ho-na,  situated  at 
the  source  of  the  Yenisei  and  east  of  the  River  Wu-se  (Us),  an 
affluent  of  the  Yenisei. 

This  region  is  accessible  only  over  two  mountain-passes  and  abounds  in 
wild  game,  while  domestic  animals  are  scarce.  The  poor  have  no  regular  means 
of  livelihood  and  erect  hovels  from  birch-bark.  They  transport  their  chattels 
on  white  deer  and  consume  the  milk  of  this  deer. 

This  certainly  is  the  reindeer.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  in  the 
same  period  we  have  a  report  from  the  Chinese  traveler  Ch'ang  Te 
(1259)  to  the  effect  that  the  Kirgiz  used  dogs  instead  of  horses  for 
drawing  sledges.3  Accordingly,  we  are  here  confronted  with  the 
curious  fact  that  a  people  in  the  central  and  southern  part  of 
Siberia  was  familiar  with  two  specific  methods  of  transportation, 
which  we  are  wont  to  connect  with  the  cultures  of  the  peoples  in 
the  high  north  and  northeast  of  Asia.  Klaproth  4  thinks  that  the 
Han-ho-na  were  of  Samoyed  stock,  presumably  because  they  kept 
reindeer;  and  there  is  certainly  a  basis  for  this  assumption.  It 
must  be  considered,  however,  that  the  reindeer  is  not  restricted  to 

1  The  Yakut's  power  of  assimilation  is  well  characterized  by  A.  v.  Middendorff 
(Die  Eingeborenen  Sibiriens,  p.  1561),  who  says  that  among  Tungusians  and  Samoyed 
the  Yakut  turns  a  Tungusian  or  Samoyed  within  the  briefest  space  of  time. 

2  Yuan  shi,  ch.  42;  63,  p.  32  b  (K'ien-lung  edition). 

3  E.  Bretschneider,  Mediaeval  Researches,  vol.  I,  p.  129. 

4  Memoir es  relatifs  a  I'Asie,  vol.  I,  p.  113. 


112  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

certain  ethnic  groups,  but  is  first  of  all  bound  to  certain  localities  of 
specific  floristic  environment.  When  a  tribal  movement  took 
place  in  the  Baikal  region,  it  could  well  happen  that  the  ownership 
of  the  reindeer  changed  hands.  The  Kirgiz,  taken  in  their  entirety, 
were  neither  reindeer-breeders  nor  keepers  of  sleigh-dogs:  neither 
the  T'ang  Annals,  which  have  preserved  for  us  the  oldest  account 
of  this  nation,  nor  Rashid-eddin1  or  Abulgazi,  state  that  it  ever 
maintained  herds  of  reindeer. 

During  the  eighteenth  century  the  Chinese  noticed  the  reindeer 
also  in  the  possession  of  Tungusian  tribes  like  the  Oroci,2  but  these 
recent  references  are  hardly  of  historical  interest.  The  news  of 
the  occurrence  of  domestic  reindeer  on  Saghalin  was  then  received 
in  Peking  as  a  novelty.3 

Reindeer  have  been  traced  by  sinologues  in  Chinese  records 
where  reindeer  cannot  be  discovered  by  an  unbiased  mind.  The 
term  Ti  ^  is  one  of  those  general  designations  under  which  the 
ancient  Chinese  comprised  a  certain  group  of  barbarous  or  semi- 
barbarous  tribes  occupying  the  southern  part  of  present  Mongolia. 
Klaproth4  argued  that  the  word  ti  signifies  also  a  large  wild  stag, 
and  concluded  that  in  ancient  times  the  hordes  in  question  availed 
themselves  of  reindeer,  like  their  eastern  neighbors,  and  that  for 
this  reason  they  received  the  name  Ti.5  This  argumentation  is 
open  to  several  objections:  true  it  is,  ti  may  denote  a  wild  stag, 
but  it  is  nowhere  explained  as  a  tamed  deer  or  reindeer.  There 
is  no  such  interpretation,  as  intimated  by  Klaproth,  of  the  ethnic 
term  Ti  on  the  part  of  the  Chinese,  neither  is  there  any  record  that 
the  alleged  eastern  neighbors  of  those  Ti  ever  kept  reindeer. 

1  His  account  of  the  Kirgiz  has  been  translated  by  Klaproth,  Memoires  relatifs  a 
VAsie,  vol.  in,  p.  366. 

2  Huang  ts'ing  chi  kung  t'u,  ch.  3.     In  the  memoirs  of  the  Manchu  Tulishen's 
embassy  to  the  Kalmuk  (1712-15)  the  reindeer  among  the  Tungus  in  the  region  of 
Irkutsk  is  briefly  described.     See  G.  T.  Staunton,  Narrative  of  the  Chinese  Embassy 
to  the  Khan  of  the  Tourgouth  Tartars  (London,  1821),  p.  70. 

3  Compare  Du  Halde,  Description  of  the  Empire  of  China,  vol.  n,  p.  247.     The 
Japanese  traveler  Mamia  Rinso,  who  visited  Saghalin  in  1808,  brought  the  first  account 
of  the  reindeer  to  Japan.     Ph.  von  Siebold,  Nippon,  vol.  n,  pp.  229-230. 

4  Tableaux  historiques  de  VAsie,  p.  102. 

5  According  to  Klaproth,  Memoires  relatifs  a  VAsie,  vol.  i,  p.  188,  the  term  Pei  Ti 
(Northern  Ti)  would  date  only  from  the  T'ang  period.     It  is  found,  however,  at  an 
earlier  date;  for  instance,  in  the  Nan  shi  (ch.  79,  p.  8  a). 


LAUFER]  THE  REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  113 

It  is  asserted  also,  after  Chinese  sources,  that  the  northern 
Shi-wei  should  have  tamed  the  reindeer.1  The  text  here  referred 
to,  however,  contains  nothing  to  this  effect,  but  merely  says  that 
the  country  of  this  people  abounded  in  wild  deer.2  According  to 
the  Chinese  account,  this  tribe  raised  cattle,  swine,  and  dogs  as 
domestic  animals,  and  fish-skin  formed  their  clothing;  reindeer 
nomads  certainly  wear  reindeer-skins.  Another  group  of  this 
people,  plainly  called  Shi-wei,  who  lived  a  thousand  li  north  of 
the  Mo-ki  or  Wu-ki,  the  center  of  their  territory  being  in  the  basin 
of  Kerulen  river,  subsisted  on  pork  and  fish,  reared  cattle  and 
horses,  but  lacked  sheep;  they  clothed  themselves  in  the  skins  of 
white  deer.3  This  "  white  deer  "  may  have  been  elk  or  wild  rein- 
deer. Theophrastus4  already  mentions  that  the  skin  of  the  wild 
reindeer  (tarandus),  which  according  to  him  occurs  in  the  territories 
of  the  Scythians  and  Sarmatians,  is  of  the  thickness  of  a  finger, 
and  is  so  durable  that  it  is  made  into  thoraxes;  and  the  lexicographer 
Hesychius  (fifth  century  A.D.)  says  that  the  Scythians  employed 
the  furs  of  the  tarandus  as  clothing.5 

Archaeological  monuments  do  not  shed  much  light  on  the  ques- 

1  J.  H.  Plath,  Die  Mandschurey,  p.  82,  who  accepted  the  translations  of  the  Jesuit 
missionaries  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

2  T'ang  hui  yao,  ch.  96,  p.  7.     Compare  Vasilyev  in  Trudy  of  the  Oriental  Section 
of  the  Imperial  Archaeological  Society,  vol.  IV  (1859),  p.  32. 

3  Wei  shu,  ch.  100,  p.  4  b.     According  to  the  T'ang  Annals  (T'ang  shu,  ch.  219, 
p.  7),  the  Shi-wei  raised  a  large  breed  of  swine,  the  tanned  skin  of  which  was  used  for 
garments.     The  so-called  Northern  Annals  give  the  following  notice  of  this  tribe: 
"  The  Shi-wei  lived  a  thousand  li  north  of  the  Mu-ki,  subsequently  styled  Mo-ho, 
six  thousand  li  from  the  capital  Lo-yang.     In  speech  they  were  related  to  the  Kitan. 
They  raised  cattle  and  horses,  but  not  sheep,  and  also  kept  swine,  subsisting  on  pork 
and  fish.     In  the  summer  they  led  a  sedentary  life;  in  the  winter  they  roamed  along 
the  river-courses,  catching  sables.     They  used  the  composite  horn  bows  and  long 
arrows.     White-deer  skins  formed  their   clothing.     Corpses  were  buried  in  the  trees 
[as  still  practised  by  Tungusian  tribes  and  often  observed  by  myself].     They  used 
coracles;  and  their  primeval  forests  and  pasture-lands  teemed  with  a  rich  fauna,  and 
[unfortunately,  as  at  present]  also  with  mosquitoes"  (Pel  shi,  ch.  94,  p.  9  b).     Deer- 
skin clothing  is  ascribed  by  the  Chinese  annalists  to  several  other  tribes  of  Siberia; 
thus,  for  instance,  the  women  of  the  Liu-kuei,  a  tribe  to  be  located  in  Kamchatka  (see 
T'oung  Pao,  1916,  p.  368),  employed  for  their  winter  costume  skins  of  swine  and  stag, 
and  fish-skins  for  summer-dress. 

4  Fragments,  172  (opera,  ed.  Wimmer,  p.  458). 

6  Sarauw,  Rentier  in  Europa,  p.  10.  * 


I  14  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

tion.  Wild  deer,  particularly  the  elk,  are  frequently  represented 
on  so-called  Scythian  and  Siberian  antiquities  of  the  bronze  age.1 
In  Mongolia  many  sepulchral  stones  with  figures  of  stags  have 
been  found.2  A  representation  of  domestic  reindeer  accompanied 
by  men,  of  ancient  date,  has  not  yet  been  traced. 

From  the  preceding  notes  it  becomes  manifest  that  the  domesti- 
cation of  the  reindeer  does  not  go  back  to  times  of  a  dim  antiquity, 
but  is  of  a  comparatively  recent  date,  falling  within  the  historical 
era.  The  Chinese  account  of  A.D.  499,  as  far  as  we  know  at  present, 
is  the  earliest  in  existence.  The  reindeer  was  then  milked  and 
employed  as  a  draught-animal;  in.  other  words,  its  domestication 
was  then  an  accomplished  fact.  By  calculating  several  centuries 
upward  of  that  date,  we  thus  arrive  at  the  primeval  period  when 
the  initial  steps  leading  to  the  domestication  were  taken.  The 
interval  required  for  the  process  of  domestication  in  its  various 
stages  will  naturally  remain  a  matter  of  conjecture  and  speculation, 
but  a  fair  compromise  may  be  reached  by  the  formula  that  the 
incipient  stage  may  belong  to  the  beginnings  of  our  era.  It  is 
obvious  also,  from  a  purely  historical  standpoint,  that  the  domesti- 
cation is  far  older  in  Asia  than  in  Europe,  and  that  consequently 
the  center  from  which  the  domestication  has  taken  its  starting- 
point  must  be  sought  for  on  Asiatic  soil. 

> 

CENTER  OF  DOMESTICATION 

All  observers  agree  in  regarding  the  domestication  of  the  rein- 
deer as  an  imitative  process  leaning  toward  that  of  horse  and  cattle. 
In  fact,* the  reindeer  is  utilized  by  man  in  exactly  the  same  manner 
as  those  two  breeds, — as  a  draught,  pack,  and  riding  animal. 
The  recent  date  of  the  domestication  also,  brings  out  its  secondary 
character.  One  of  the  most  peculiar  and  uniform  features  which 
is  apt  to  illustrate  the  imitative  tendency  is  the  castration  of  the 
stags,  practised  alike  throughout  the  zone  of  reindeer  occurrence. 

1  See  Aspelin,  Antiquites  du  nord  finno-ougrien,  p.  68,  no.  307;  p.  69,  nos.  311, 
313-315;  P-  7i,  no.  323- 

2  Inscriptions  de  V lenissei,  p.  16.     I.  G.  Grano,  Archdol.  Beobachlungen  in  Siidsi- 
birien  und  Nordwest-Mongolei  (Helsingfors,  1910),  pp.  49,  53;  and  Geogr.  Verbreitung 
der  Alter tiimer  in  der  Nordwest-Mongolei  (ibid.,  1910),  pp.  37,  45. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER   AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  115 

In  the  eighteenth  century  Knud  Leems1  reported,  "  Taurum  rangi- 
ferinum  castraturus  Lappo,  testiculos  non,  ut  alias  fieri  solet, 
dissecta  cute,  eruit,  sed,  admoto  ore,  dentibus  contundit."  In  the 
same  manner  the  process  is  described  in  modern  times  by  J.  D. 
Caton,2 

The  Lapp  perform  the  operation  with  their  teeth;  the  glands  are  bruised  or 
crushed  without  breaking  the  skin.  No  other  mode  of  castration  has  ever  been 
known  among  the  Lapp.  This  imperfect  operation  is  probably  sufficient  for 
their  purposes,  for  it  so"  subdues  the  natural  ferocity  of  the  animal  as  to  subject ,  .. 
him  to  control,  while  it  leaves  enough  of  spirit  to  make  his  services  highly  suf- 
ficient. Were  it  carried  as  far  as  with  us,  it  might  so  destroy  his  energy  as  to 
leave  him  practically  useless.3. 

The  Ostyak  designate  the  gelded  reindeer  xatri,  which,  according 
to  S.  Patkanov,4  is  a  loan-word  received  from  Samoyed.  Whether 
the  Ostyak  adopted  the  process  from  this  people  remains  an  open 
question;  but  this  is  more  than  probable,  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
the  Samoyed  are  the  most  skilful  and  successful  reindeer-breeders, 
and  are  doubtless  responsible  for  the  transportation  of  the  animal 
from  Asia  to  Europe.5  The  Chukchi,  according  to  Bogoras,6  in 
order  to  geld  the  bucks,  bite  with  their  teeth  either  through  the 

dowcets  or  through  the  spermatic  ducts.     The  operation  is  said 
» > 

1  Beskrivehe  over  Finmarkens  Lapper  (Kiobenhavn,  1767;  in  Danish  and  Latin), 
p.  152. '  About  a  century  earlier  we  have  the  same  observation  recorded  by  J.  Scheffer, 
Lappland  (Franckfurt,  1675),  p.  374. 

2  A  Summer  in  Norway  (Chicago,  1880),  p.  228.  .  , 

3  See  also  E.  Demant,  Das  Buck  des  Lappen  Johan  Tfyiri,  p.  40:     This  book  con- 
tains the  autobiography  of  a  Lapp,  and  is  one  of  the  finest  documents  of  primitive 
life  and  thought  that  we  possess. 

*Die  Irtysch-Ostjaken,  vol.  I,  p.  18.  See  also  A.  Ahlqvist,  Journal  de  la  Sociele 
Jinrio-ougrienne,  vol.  vin,  1890,  p.  6.  *Phere  are  many  more  Samoyed  loan-words  in 
Ostyak  relative  to  reindeer-culture:  hence  AhlqvisfcJj^fo'c?.,  p.  21)  concluded  that  the 
Ostyak  appear  to  have  adopted  from  the  Samo^led  certain  important  features  of 
reindeer-breeding,  or  perhaps  even  this  entire  industry,  i  «  .... 

5  Among  the  Samoyed,  a  very  specialized  nomenclatraSr  of  the  rei<ld||jpr  and  the 
equipment  relating  to  it  obtains,  as  showri  by  a  glance  at  A.   CastrSti'^Vfidrterver- 
zeichnisse  aus  den  samojedischen  Sprachen,  pp.  262-263^  Terms  denoting  the  wild 
and  domesticated  animal,  the  gelded  and  ungelded  male,  are  strictly  differentiated; 
and  there  are  peculiar  words  for  the  female,  the  calf  in  its  various  stages  of  growth, 
the  old  and  the  hornless  animal,  with  many  variations  in  the  dialects. 

6  Jesup  North  Pacific  Expedition,  vol.  vn,  p.  84. 


Il6  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

not  to  affect  the  reindeer  much,  for  immediately  afterward  it  con- 
tinues to  graze.  Sometimes  the  scrotum  is  tied  very  tightly  with  a 
sinew  thread,  and  after  a  while  becomes  atrophied  and  drops  off. 

'The  milking  of  the  reindeer  is  another  practice  which  demon- 
strates the  dependence  of  the  domestication.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  it  came  into  existence  in  imitation  of  milking  cows, 
mares,  and  sheep.  The  fact  that  this  economy  is  comparatively 
old  is  attested  by  the  Chinese  account  of  the  fifth  century.  Even 
the  Tungus,  who,  with  a  few  exceptions,  use  the  reindeer  solely  for 
riding,  milk  the  calving  females.  Four  teacupfuls  of  milk  within 
twenty-four  hours  make  the  whole  produce.  The  Chukchi  even 
try  to  suck  milk  from  the  doe's  udder.1'  The  reindeer  is  plainly 
not  a  milk- furnishing  animal,  and  has  been  forced  by  man  into 
assuming  a  role  which  is  denied  to  it  by  nature.2  j^^ 

Property-marks  for  the  purpose  of  recognizing  their  aniprals 
are  utilized  by  all  reindeer-breeding  tribes.  The  Chukchi  again 
betray  their  fondness  of  biting  likewise  in  this  case;  for  they  mark 
their  property  by  biting  a  piece  out  of  the  fawns'  ears  in  late  summer, 
or  the  next  spring  during  the  separation  of  bucks  from  pregnant 
dams.  The  Lapp,3  Samoyed,  Tungus,  and  other  reindeer  peoples, 
cut  marks  in  the  ears  of  their  animals.  Thirteen  such  marks 
from  the  Tungus  of  Ayan  have  been  illustrated  by  Pekarski  and 
Tsv'atkov.4  One  or  two  cuts,  in  straight  lines,  angular,  or  rounded, 
are  made  in  one  ear  or  in  both.  This  practice  has  been  perpetuated 
by  our  Government  in  Alaska. 

Every  local  superintendent  must  take  careful  oversight  of  the  annual  mark- 
ing of  the  reindeer  and  see  that  all  reindeer  are  correctly  marked  according  to 
ownership.  He  shall  keep  a  complete  list  of  such  marks  in  the  records  of  the 
station.6 

1  Bogoras,  I.  c. 

2  In  regard  to  peculiar  methods  of  milking  on  the  part  of  the  Lapp,  see  E.  Demant, 
Buck  des  Lappen  Johan  Turi,  pp.  30,  39;  on  the  part  of  the  Soyot  0.  Olsen,  El  primitivt 
-folk  (Kristiania,  1914),  p.  67. 

3  J.  Scheffer,  Lappland,  p.  379. 

4  "  Ocerki  byta  Priayanskix  Tungusov,"  Publication  du  Musee  d'Anthropologie, 
vol.  n,  p.  37- 

8  Rules  and  Regulations  regarding  the  U.  S.  Reindeer  Service  in  Alaska,  approved 
June  10,  1907,  and  December  7,  1008  (Washington,  1911). 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  H7 

Aluminum  button  markers  are  employed  for  this  purpose.1  The 
reindeer-breeders  of  Siberia  are  not  the  originators  of  this  custom, 
but  it  was  doubtless  transmitted  to  them  by  Turkish-Mongol 
tribes.  The  term  tamaga,  tamga,  tamka,  denoting  a  property- 
mark  on  cattle  and  subsequently  a  seal,  is  common  to  all  of  these; 
it  is  diffused  all  over  Siberia,  and  is  even  known  in  China  and  Tibet 
(dam-k'a,  t'am-ga).2 

The  uniformity  of  reindeer-breeding  is  characterized  also  by  the 
universal  method  of  lassoing  the  animals.  Everywhere  a  long 
lasso,  either  plaited  from  horse-hair  or  from  thin  seal-skin  straps, 
is  used  for  catching  the  deer  after  pasturing  in  the  morning,  when 
its  services  are  required.  The  Tungus  are  very  skilful  in  throwing 
the  lasso  from  a  respectable  distance;  and  most  animals  will  pa- 
tiently halt,  or  even  run  to  their  master's  side,  as  soon  as  merely 
touched  by  the  rope.  A  classical  description  of  this  procedure  i 
given  by  the  Yakut  Uvarovski  in  his  autobiography.3 

The  reindeer-breeders  cannot  lay  claim,  either,  to  any  origin 
thought  or  invention  as  to  the  entire  apparatus  utilized  by  them  in 
connection  with  the  reindeer.  Above  all,  the  pack-saddle  and  the 
method  of  loading,  riding-saddle,  harness,  sledge,  and  snowshoes, 
are  all  borrowed  institutions.4  The  geographical  distribution  of 
sledge  and  snowshoe  by  no  means  coincides  with  the  area  of  reindeer 
domestication.  On  the  one  hand,  we  encounter  the  two  imple- 
ments among  the  primitive  dog-breeding  tribes  of  northern  and 
northeastern  Asia,  inclusive  of  the  Amur  and  Ussuri  regions,  where 
the  reindeer  is  unknown;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  they  extend  far 
into  the  south  of  Siberia,  even  into  Mongolia  and  Turkistan,  where 
they  are  associated  neither  with  the  dog  nor  with  the  reindeer. 
Sledge  and  snowshoe,  accordingly,  cover  an  infinitely  wider  territory 
than  the  domestic  reindeer,  and  obviously  were  in  existence  in 

1  S.  Jackson,  Fourteenth  Annual  Report  on  Introduction  of  Reindeer  into  Alaska, 
1904  (Washington,  1905),  p.  108.     On  plates  33  and  34  of  this  report  will  be  found 
illustrations  of  several  such  marks. 

2  W.  Radloff,  Worterbuch  der  Tilrk-Dialecte,  vol.  in,  col.  1003;  T.  Watters,  Essays 
on  the  Chinese  Language,  p.  374. 

3  O.  Bohtlingk,  Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Jakuten,  text,  p.  45. 

4  Bogoras  (/.  c.,  p.  88)  has  called  attention  to  the  uniform  character  of  the  collar 
for  the  sledge-reindeer  among  Chukchi,  Tungus,  Samoyed,  and  Lapp. 


Il8  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

times  prior  to  its  domestication.  As  we  learn  from  the  early 
Chinese  account  relating  to  the  year  A.D.  499,  the  reindeer  must 
have  been  trained  to  the  sledge  at  that  date  (and  certain  it  is  that 
this  utilization  of  the  animal  preceded  its  breaking-in  for  the 
saddle) ;  and,  since  the  same  people  had  also  horses  and  oxen  for 
drawing  vehicles,  it  is  manifest  that  this  older  method  was  simply 
transferred  to  the  reindeer.  The  Chinese  annals  furnish  several 
classical  examples  of  the  early  employment  of  snowshoe  and  sledge 
on  the  part  of  tribes  which  never  availed  themselves  of  the  service 
of  the  reindeer. 

According  to  the  Annals  of  the  T'ang  dynasty  (618-906),  there 
was  east  of  the  Kirgiz,  on  the  Yenisei,  a  tribe  styled  "  Snowshoe 
Turks"  (Mu  ma  T'u-kiie,  literally,  "wooden-horse  T'u-kue  'V 
consisting  of  three  hordes. 

They  covered  their  habitations  with  birch-bark  and  owned  numerous  horses. 
They  used  to  cross  the  ice  on  snowshoes  ('wooden  horses')  which  they  tied  to 
their  feet,  taking  curved  branches  as  supports  for  the  shoulders  (snow-sticks), 
and  thus  swiftly  pushing  ahead. 

In  regard  to  the  Pa-ye-ku  (Bayirku),  it  is  said  that  all  people 
put  wooden  boards  under  their  feet  and  pursue  deer  over  the  ice.2 
The  Liu-kuei,  a  tribe  to  be  located  in  Kamchatka  and  mentioned  on 
page  113,  note  3,  according  to  the  T'ang  Annals,3  "  fastened  to  their 
feet  wooden  boards  six  inches  wide  and  seven  feet  long,  and  thus 
hunted  the  game  over  the  ice."  Likewise  the  Kirgiz  on  the  upper 
Yenisei,  of  whom  we  have  a  description  in  the  Annals  of  the  T'ang, 
pursued  the  game  on  snowshoes.4  A  description  of  the  snowshoe 
and  the  mode  of  using  it  is  given  also  by  Rashid-eddin  in  connection 

1  In  Tibetan,  sin-rta  (wooden  horse)  means  any  vehicle  or  carriage.     Compare 
also  Russian  konki  (skates;  literally,  little  horses),  from  kon'ok,  diminutive  of  konf 
(horse).     Chinese  T'u-kiie  represents  a  transcription  of  the  name  Turk,  more  exactly 
of  the  plural  form  Tiirkiit  (see  Pelliot,  T'oung  Pao,  1915,  p.  687). 

2  T'ang  hui  yao,  ch.  98,  p.  16.     The  Pa-ye-ku  are  mentioned  under  the  name 
Bayirku  in  the  Turkish  inscriptions  of  Kiil-tegin  and  Bilga-kagan;  they  were  a  Turkish 
tribe  living  in  the  north  of  the  Gobi.     See  also  above,  p.  105. 

3  Ch.  220,  p.  ii  b. 

4  Some  authors,  like  Klaproth  and  Ritter,  thought  in  this  connection  of  sledges; 
but  it  has  been  correctly  observed  by  W.  Schott,  in  "  Ueber  die  achten  Kirgisen,"  Ab~ 
handlungen  Berliner  Akademie  (1865),  p.  447;  and  his  additional  notes  in  Monats- 
berichte  Berliner  Akademie  (1874),  PP-  I-8.  that  snowshoes  solely  are  involved. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  Up 

with  the  Uryangkit  (above,  p.  108).  He  adds  that  the  snowshoe  is 
known  in  a  large  part  of  Mongolia  and  Turkistan,  and  that  ski- 
running  is  particularly  practised  by  the  Barguchim  Tukum,  Khori, 
Kirgiz,  Urasut,  Telengut,  and  Tumat.  The  word  used  by  the 
Persian  annalist  is  cane  or  cana,  which,  as  is  well  known,  is  found 
in  all  Turkish  and  Mongol  languages  with  both  significances, 
"snowshoe"  and  "sledge:"  Mongol  tsana  and  cana,  Buryat 
sana,  Altaic  canak,  cana,  etc.;  Finnish  saani,  Esthonian  san, 
Lettish  sanus,  sanas,  Magyar  szdn,  szdny,  or  szdnka,  szdnko 
(diminutive);  Russian  sani  (plural),  sanki  or  sanocki  (diminutive).1 

A  profound  study  of  all  types  of  sledge  and  snowshoe  will  doubt- 
less yield  promising  results.2  Here  it  may  be  emphasized  only 
that  the  reindeer-breeders  adopted  ready-made  what  they  found, 
merely  changing  some  of  the  material :  thus  they  preferred  reindeer-, 
skin  for  snowshoes,  while  the  Turks  used  horse-skin  and  the  Gilyak 
seal-skin.  L.  von  Schrenck3  has  shown  in  particular  how  thev 
Orocon  (Schrenck:  Oroki),  scattered  over  a  few  spots  of  Saghalin 
Island,  adapted  the  dog-sledge  of  the  Gilyak  to  reindeer-trans- 
portation.4 

From  a  negative  viewpoint,   we  might  say  that  neither  the 

1  J.  Kalima  (Worter  und  Sachen  (1910),  vol.  n,  p.  183)  has  studied  to  some  extent 
the  distribution  of  this  word  from  the  Slavistic  standpoint,  and  arrives  at  the  con- 
clusion that  it  is  a  very  ancient  word,  which  Slavic,  Finno-Ugrian,  and  Turkish  lan- 
guages have  in  common.     In  my  opinion,  the  word  is  of  Turkish-Mongol  origin,  and 
a  loan-word  in  Finno-Ugrian  and  Slavic.     There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  term  has 
migrated  jointly  with  the  object  which  it  denotes.     The  investigation  of  Kalima  is 
obscured  by  the  fact  that  he  adds  Lapp  cidinne,  Russian  cuni,  cunki  (in  the  northern 
dialects),  and  Vogul  sun,  which  must  be  dissociated  from  the  above  series,  and  in  fact 
are  independent  words. 

2  Compare  the  preliminary  remarks  on  snowshoes  by  G.  Hatt,  "  Moccasins  and 
Their  Relation  to  Arctic  Footwear,"  Memoirs  American  Anthropological  Association, 
vol.  in,  1916,  p.  240. 

3  Reisen  und  Forschungen  im  Amur-Lande,  vol.  in,  p.  494. 

4  It  is  not  correct,  however,  to  say  with  Schrenck  that  the  Saghalin  Orocon  are 
the  only  Tungusians  to  make  use  of  sledges  in  connection  with  the  reindeer.     The 
practice  is  not  generally  Tungusian,  as  wrongly  asserted  by  C.  Hiekisch,  Die  Tungusen, 
p.  78,  but  is  an  exception,  which,  however,  occurs  sporadically  wherever  Tungusians 
come  in  contact  with  Palaeo-Asiatic  dog-breeders.     The   illustration   of   a   Tundra 
Tungus  in  the  Kolyma  district,  driving  on  a  reindeer-sledge,  may  be  seen  in  V.  Jochel- 
son,  Ocerk  zv'aropromyslennosti  i  torgovli  m'axami  v  Kolymskom  okrug' a  (Sketch  of  the 
Animal  Industry  and  Fur  Trade  in  the  District  of  Kolyma),  p.  36. 


120  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

Lapp  nor  the  Ugrians  in  the  west,  nor  the  Yakut  (p.  no),  nor  the 
Chukchi  and  Koryak  in  the  northeast,  can  come  into  question  as 
the  original  reindeer-tamers.  Among  the  Chukchi  the  introduction 
of  the  reindeer  appears  to  be  an  affair  of  comparatively  recent  date, 
as  shown,  if  by  nought  else,  by  the  imperfect  degree  of  domestica- 
tion. It  is  difficult,  however,  to  accept  Bogoras'  opinion  that 
"  they  did  not  introduce  the  tame  reindeer  from  their  neighbors, 
but  that,  in  imitation  of  them,  they  attempted  to  domesticate  the 
race  of  reindeer  inhabiting  their  own  country."  Such  an  expendi- 
ture of  energy  cannot  be  attributed  to  the  Chukchi;  and,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  such  an  instance  of  waste  of  energy  is  beyond  our 
experience  in  the  life  of  peoples.  Man  in  general  is  not  inclined 
toward  work,  unless  compelled  by  sheer  necessity  or  some  induce- 
ment; still  less  does  he  try  to  do  over  again  what  has  been  accom- 
plished by  his  neighbor.  Bogoras  believes  his  theory  to  be  plausible, 
since  the  Chukchi  reindeer  is  quite  different  from  that  of  the  Tungus. 
This  fact,  however,  can  be  simply  explained  from  the  constant 
crossings  between  tame  and  wild  reindeer,  emphasized  by  Bogoras 
farther  on.  It  is  inconceivable  that  any  Palaeo-Asiatic  tribe  ever 
undertook  to  domesticate  the  reindeer,  as  the  maintenance  of 
sleigh-dogs  excludes  the  reindeer.  L.  von  Schrenck l  has  already 
made  the  appropriate  remark  that 

the  ancestors  of  the  migrating  Chukchi  and  Koryak  themselves  surely  did  not 
domesticate  the  reindeer,  but  received  it  in  the  domesticated  state  from  a  nomadic 
.tribe,  presumably  the  Tungus. 

Tungusians,  however,  cannot  be  claimed  to  be  the  originators  of 
reindeer-domestication,  as  L.  von  Schrenck  maintains  they  are. 
The  first  Russian  discoverers  of  eastern  Siberia,  who  came  in  con- 
tact with  the  Tungus,  speak  of  Reindeer,  Horse,  Dog,  Steppe,  and 
Woodland  Tungus.2  These  divisions  have  no  ethnographical  sig- 

1  Reisen  und  Forschungen  im  Amur-Lande,  vol.  in,  p.  489. 

2  P.  J.  v.  Strahlenberg,  Das  nord-  und  ostliche  Theil  von  Europa  und  Asia  (Stock- 
holm, 1730),  p.  423.     Regarding  the  distribution  and  economy  of  the  Tungus.  see  S. 
Patkanow,    "  Geographie    und    Statistik   der   Tungusen-Stamme    Sibiriens "    Keleti 
Szemle,  vol.  iv,  pp.  141-171,  287-316;  vol.  v,  pp.  36-56,  185-203;  vol.  vi,  pp.  130- 
174,    222-283;    and  the  same  author's  0  prirosl'a  inorodceskago  naseleniya  Sibiri 
(S.-Peterburg,  1911),  pp.  87-115. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  121 

nificance,  but  merely  allude  to  the  economic  conditions  under 
which  the  people  were  encountered  at  a  certain  time.  Even  this 
mode  of  life  is  by  no  means  a  stable  characteristic,  for  the  economy 
of  these  tribes  is  subject  to  sudden  and  fundamental  changes. 
Cases  have  occurred  where  reindeer-owners  lost  their  herds  and 
turned  to  the  rearing  of  horses  or  only  dogs,  or  where  woodland 
people  were  transformed  into  inhabitants  of  the  steppe.1  The 
Birar,  settled  in  the  river  system  of  the  Bureya  and  on  both  banks 
of  the  Amur  above  and  below  the  mouth  of  that  side-river,  accord- 
ing to  the  Cossack  Poyarkov,  who  came  in  touch  with  them  in 
1646,  were  engaged  in  reindeer-breeding;  only  thirty-five  years 
later  they  are  described  as  horse-nomads.2  The  Tungusians, 
accordingly,  are  shifting  opportunists,  and,  in  the  course  of  their 
constant  peregrinations,  simply  adopt  that  mode  of  life  best  suited 
to  the  geographical  and  economic  environment  of  the  respective 
places.  Originally  they  were  mere  hunters  and  fishermen;  but, 
being  possessed  of  an  adaptable  spirit  and  a  quick  grasp  of  change- 
able conditions,  they  were  capable  of  appropriating  any  industry 
offered  by  their  neighbors.  Historical  considerations  show  us 
that  the  Tungusian  tribes,  in  former  periods  of  their  life,  were  never 
given  to  reindeer-breeding.  In  fact,  they  are  late  arrivals  in 
Siberia,  while  their  original  home  is  to  be  sought  for  in  Manchuria. 
We  can  trace  their  history  almost  completely  from  very  early 
times  by  means  of  the  Chinese  annals;  but  in  these  no  mention  of 
reindeer  is  made  with  reference  to  any  Tungusian  people,  with  the 
sole  exception  of  a  branch  of  the  Wu-huan  (p.  105).  Only  when 
they  were  pushed  into  Siberian  regions  did  they  become  acquainted 
with  the  reindeer.  It  is  even  doubtful  whether  the  Tungusians 
were  the  first  to  use  the  reindeer  as  a  riding-beast.  The  Soyot,  ! 
as  will  be  seen,  still  ride  the  reindeer;  and  the  reindeer-riding  tribe 
alluded  to  by  Marco  Polo  (p.  107)  was  doubtless  related  to  the 
Soyot  or  their  group. 

If  it  is  true  that  the  reindeer  represents  a  mere  repetition  of 
cattle  and  horse  domestication  on  a  smaller  scale,  it  is  logical  to 

1  Examples  are  cited  by  C.  Hiekisch,  Die  Tungusen,  p.  47;  and  L.  v.  Schrenck, 
Reisen  und  Forschungen  im  Amur-Lande,  vol.  in,  p.  144. 

2  Patkanow,  Keleti  Szemle  (1904),  vol.  V,  p.  41. 


122  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

conclude  that  the  reindeer  can  have  been  domesticated  only  in  a 
locality  where  it  occurred  in  close  association  with  cattle  and  horse. 
In  the  northern  regions,  where  the  wild  tundra  reindeer  prevails, 
we  meet  at  present  as  domestic  animals  the  reindeer  and  the  dog; 
in  the  southern  belt,  occupied  by  the  wild  woodland  reindeer,  we 
find  the  domestic  reindeer  in  company  with  other  large  domestic 
stocks.  It  is  therefore  clear  that  the  original  center  of  domesti- 
cation is  to  be  looked  for  in  the  gouthern^belt.  The  fact  that 
Ugrian  peoples  were  in  possession  of  reindeer-herds  employed  as 
draught-animals  toward  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  has  been 
established  from  Russian  documents  (pp.  96-99).  At  present  the 
well-to-do  Wogul  living  in  Beresov  (in  the  western  part  of  Tobolsk 
government)  keep  cows,  horses,  and  reindeer.  They  are  so  reduced 
to  poverty,  however,  that  few  own  more  than  several  tens.  A 
Wogul  on  the  upper  Tapsya  River,  who  has  a  couple  of  hundred, 
is  regarded  as  very  rich  in  this  region;  whereas,  compared  with 
well-to-do  Samoyed  in  Obdorsk,  he  would  only  be  a  wretched 
beggar,  for  these  count  their  reindeer  by  the  thousands.1  In  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  wealthy  among  the  Ugrian 
Ostyak  still  kept  a  large  number  of  reindeer,  together  with  cattle, 
horses,  and  dogs;  but  many  of  them  were  so  poor  that  they  had  to 
be  content  with  reindeer.  This  is  the  account  of  G.  Novitski,  who 
wrote  in  1715, — the  earliest  historian  of  this  tribe.2  At  the  present 
time,  only  the  Ostyak  of  the  north,  being  neighbors  of  the  Samoyed, 
still  have  reindeer;3  but  it  lost  ground  among  the  Irtysh-Ostyak 
farther  south.  In  the  epic  traditions  of  this  people,  ably  collected 
and  translated  by  S.  Patkanov  and  traced  with  good  reason  to  a 
period  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  fifteenth  century,  reindeer  and 

1  A.  Ahlquist,  in  Erman's  Archiv  fur  wissensch.  Kunde  von  Russland  (1860),  vol. 
xx,  p.  157.     Regarding  reindeer  among  the  Wogul,  see  also  A.  Erman,  Reise  um  die 
Well,  vol.  i,  pt.  i,  p.  384.     Reindeer-sledges  of  the  Wogul  are  illustrated  by  K.  D. 
Nosilov,  U  Vogulov  ocerki  i  nabroski  (1904),  pp.  183,  189. 

2  G.  Novitski,  Kratkoe  opisanie  o  narod'd  Ost'atskom,  ed.  of  L.  Maikov  (St.  Peters- 
burg, 1884),  p.  37.     An  interesting  contribution  to  the  history  of  this  people  is  the 
article  of  A.  van  Gennep,  "  Origine  et  fortune   du  nom  de  peuple  '  ostiak  '  "  Keleti 
Szemle  (1902),  vol.  in,  pp.  13-32;  reprinted  in  his  Religions,  mceurs  et  legendes,  pp. 
94-109. 

3  M.  A.  Castren,  Reiseerinnerungen  aus  den  Jahren  1838-1844,  p.  300. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS   DOMESTICATION  12$ 

dog  are  mentioned  as  domestic  animals.  At  that  time,  also  the 
inhabitants  of  the  northern  part  of  the  district  of  Tobolsk  kept 
herds  of  reindeer;  while  at  present  half-domesticated  reindeer  are 
encountered  only  farther  northward,  beneath  Beresov.  The 
domestic  reindeer  supplied  the  Ostyak  with  meat,  skins,  and  sinews; 
served  as  most  important  draught-animal  in  those  snow-abounding 
regions;  and  was  slaughtered  in  honor  of  the  gods  on  the  occasion 
of  the  sacrificial  holidays.  When  the  breeding  of  reindeer  was  still 
thriving  among  them,  this  animal  was  exclusively  chosen  for  the 
sacrifice,  which  is  still  customary  in  the  north,  among  the  Ostyak 
and  Samoyed  living  there.1  Patkanov  holds  the  opinion  that 
reindeer-breeding  is  only  a  secondary  industry  among  the  Ostyak 
and  Wogul;  that  is  to  say,  when  these  tribes  were  pushed  from 
southern  regions  into  their  present  northern  domicile,  they  were 
compelled  to  abandon  the  larger  domestic  breeds  in  consequence 
of  unfavorable  geographical  conditions,  and  to  take  to  the  reindeer. 
I  would  not  subscribe  to  this  theory  unconditionally;  but  what 
interests  us  in  this  connection  is  merely  the  coexistence  of  reindeer, 
cattle,  and  horse  among  Wogul  and  Ostyak,  neither  of  whom, 
notwithstanding,  can  be  regarded  as  the  original  domesticator  of 
the  reindeer. 

There  is  but  one  territory  where  all  the  necessary  postulates  for 
reindeer-breeding  are  given,  and  which  may  come  into  question  as 
the  original  center  of  the  domestication,  and  this  is  the  region  of 
Lake  Baikal.  There  we  meet  the  reindeer,  wild  and  domesticated, 
and,  as  has  been  shown,  from  ancient  times.  There  we  meet  a 
host  of  tribes  partially  engaged  in  horse  and  cattle  rearing,  and 
partially  depending  on  the  reindeer;  there,  accordingly,  the  contact 
of  reindeer-breeders  with  horse  and  cattle  raisers  is  virtually  estab- 
lished. The  ancient  Chinese  records,  as  we  have  seen,  likewise 
point  to  the  same  center.  In  the  Baikal  territory  we  find  at  the 
present  time  three  large  and  distinct  stocks  of  peoples, — the  Buryat, 
a  branch  of  the  Mongol  family ;  Tungusians ;  and  a  large  number  of 
tribes,  originally  of  Samoyed  and  Yenisei-Ostyak  stock,  but  now 
either  Turkicized  (otatarilis,  "  Tatarized,"  as  the  Russians  say) 

1  S.  Patkanov,  Die  Irtysch-Ostjaken,  vol.  i,  p.  109;  vol.  n,  p.  017. 


124  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

or  Mongolized,  and  for  the  most  part  speaking  a  Turkish  language. 
The  Buryat  occupy  the  area  in  the  governments  of  Irkutsk  and 
Transbaikalia  from  the  Chinese  frontier  as  far  as  the  Lena  system 
northward,  and  from  the  rivers  Onon  to  Oka,  the  side-river  of  the 
Angara,  westward,  and  still  farther  west  into  the  region  of  Nizne- 
Udinsk.  The  Buryat  element  is  strongest  beyond  the  Baikal,  in 
the  valleys  of  the  Uda,  Onon,  and  Selenga.  Those  on  this  side  of 
the  Baikal  are  to  some  extent  Russianized,  even  practising  agri- 
culture. The  others  are  herdsmen  and  owners  of  horses,  cattle, 
sheep,  and  goats.  The  reindeer  is  entirely  foreign  to  them,  and 
never  was  in  the  hands  of  any  tribe  of  the  Mongol  family.  Tun- 
gusians  are  scattered  in  the  governments  of  Irkutsk,  Yenisei,  and 
Transbaikalia,  chiefly  subsisting  on  fishing  and  hunting,  but  also 
on  agriculture  and  cattle-breeding.  In  Irkutsk  government  only  a 
few  clans  on  the  upper  Lena  keep  reindeer;  in  Yenisei  government 
the  latter  are  owned  only  by  the  well-to-do.  In  Transbaikalia  we 
encounter  among  the  Tungusians  hunters,  agriculturists,  cattle- 
breeders,  and  reindeer  people.  Especially  those  inhabiting  the 
districts  of  Tshitin  and  Barguzin  keep  reindeer.1 

It  seems  certain  that  the  Samoyed  are  not  autochthonous  in 
their  present  habitats,  but  migrated  there  from  southern  regions, 
in  all  probability  from  the  territory  of  the  Sayan  mountains  or  the 
upper  courses  of  the  Yenisei  basin,  where  there  are  still  many 
scattered  tribes  of  them  enclosed  by  Mongols  and  Turks.  Most  of 
these  split  Samoyed  adopted  the  language  and  customs  of  their 
superior  neighbors,  yet  they  remain  conscious  of  the  fact  of  their 
original  nationality.  I  designate  this  group  as  Sayan  tribes  or 
southern  Samoyed.  Among  the  Soyot  within  the  boundaries  of 
China  there  are  family-names  that  also  occur  among  the  Samoyed 
roving  along  the  Arctic  littorals.2  The  Woodland  Kamasin  still 
spoke  Samoyed  at  the  time  of  Castren's  travels  (about  1840-50); 

1  S.  Patkanov,  Keleti  Szemle,  vol.  vi  (1905),  pp.  278,  279.  Concerning  the  Bar- 
guzin Tungus,  see  an  article  by  N.  M.  Dobromyslov,  "  Zam'atki  po  etnografii  Bar- 
guzinskix  Orocen,"  in  Trudy  of  the  Troitskosavsk-Kiachta  Section  of  the  Imperial 
Geogr.  Soc.,  vol.  v  (1902),  pp  78-87. 

2M.  A.  Castren,  Kleinere  Schriften,  pp.  116-117;  W.  Crahmer,  Zeitschrifl  filr 
Ethnologic  (1912),  p.  no. 


LAUFER]  THE  REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  12$ 

but  fifteen  years  later,  when  visited  by  W.  Radloff,1  they  had 
adopted  a  Turkish  form  of  speech.  Two  groups  of  these  peoples 
are  still  active  reindeer-breeders, — the  Karagas  and  the  Soyot. 
The  former  roam  in  the  territory  between  the  rivers  Oka,  Uda, 
Biryusa,  and  Kan  (the  boundary  district  of  the  governments  of 
Yenisei  and  Irkutsk),  numbering  about  550  individuals.  They  are 
divided  into  five  clans,  one  living  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Soyot, 
another  near  the  Kamasin,  and  another  near  the  Buryat.  Although 
now  speaking  a  Turkish  language  of  which  we  have  an  excellent 
grammar  by  Castren,  and  closely  resembling  their  Turkish  neighbors 
in  costume  and  manners,  their  methods  of  hunting  and  reindeer- 
keeping,  as  well  as  their  winter  tents  made  of  reindeer-skins,  are 
identical  with  those  of  the  Samoyed.  Also  their  physical  habitus, 
several  of  their  family  names,  and  the  survival  of  many  Samoyed 
words  in  their  speech,  clearly  bespeak  their  origin.  The  Soyot  or 
Soyon,  styling  themselves  Tuba  and  designated  by  the  Mongols 
Urangkhai  (see  above,  p.  109),  inhabit  northwestern  Mongolia  and  a 
small  strip  of  country  along  the  Russian  frontier  from  the  sources 
of  the  river  Kobdo  as  far  as  lake  Koso.  A  great  number  of  them 
who  live  farther  south  on  the  slopes  of  the  Tangnu  mountains  are 
completely  converted  into  Mongols.  According  to  Castren,  many 
Soyot  clan-names  agree  with  those  of  the  Samoyed ;  and  the  Soyot 
clan  Mattar,  according  to  traditions,  originated  from  the  Mator, 
who  decidedly  were  Samoyed ;  he  argued  also  that  several  Yenisei- 
Ostyak  clans  had  become  Soyot.  Radloff2  regards  them  as  a  medley 
of  Kirgiz,  Samoyed,  and  Yenisei-Ostyak;  Katanov,3  as  consisting 
of  Mongol,  Turkish,  and  Samoyed  elements.  At  present  their 
language  is  Turkish,  but  among  many  tribes  Buddhism  and  Mongol 
speech  have  spread  so  widely,  that  the  Turkish  element  is  threatened 
with  extinction. 

G.  Radde,4  in  1862,  outlined  the  following  sketch  of  the  distri- 

1  Ethnographische  Uebersicht  der  Tiirkstamme,  p.  6.  Regarding  the  Saj^an  tribes 
compare  also  the  interesting  article  of  N.  F.  Katanov,  "  Predaniya  Prisayanskix 
piemen  o  preznix  d'alax  i  1'ud'ax,"  in  Sbornik  v  cest'  semides'atil'atiya  G.  N.  Potanina, 
pp.  265-288. 

*  L.  c.,  p.  17. 

3  In  Sbornik  Potanina,  p.  286. 

4  Reisen  im  Stiden  von  Ost-Sibirien,  vol.  I,  Saugetierfauna,  p.  287. 


126  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

bution  of  the  reindeer  in  the  Baikal  region.  South  of  Ilchir  lake 
the  tame  reindeer,  together  with  the  horse  and  frequently  also  with 
cattle,  is  found  among  the  mountain  tribes.  During  the  summer  a 
division  of  these  herds  becomes  necessary,  the  reindeer  being  driven 
into  the  high  mountains  of  an  altitude  of  seven  or  eight  thousand 
feet,  the  horses  and  cattle  grazing  in  the  deeper  valleys  of  four  or 
five  thousand  feet.  In  the  Baikal  regions  the  reindeer  is  ubiquitous; 
in  the  southwestern  parts,  however,  it  is  sparse  now.  In  the 
mountains  where  the  river  Jida  takes  its  source,  south  of  Turansk, 
it  is  met  among  the  Uryankhai,  who  inhabit  there  the  space  between 
the  Russian  and  Chinese  frontiers.  It  is  excluded  from  the  Selenga 
valley,  the  upper  part  of  which,  on  the  Russian  side,  is  inhabited 
by  Buryat  engaged  in  the  rearing  of  sheep,  cattle,  and  horses. 
In  the  northeastern  corner  of  lake  Baikal  it  increases  in  frequency, 
but  even  there  the  Tungusians  become  impoverished  in  consequence 
of  the  decrease  of  the  stock.  In  regard  to  the  Soyot  and  Jot,  he 
observes  that  they  rear  reindeer  in  large  numbers  (up  to  three 
hundred).  The  wild  species  still  occurs  farther  to  the  south  as  an 
inhabitant  of  the  upper  zones  of  the  forest  boundary,  and  beyond 
as  far  as  the  snow-line.  Hahn1  has  made  the  correct  observation 
that  in  the  Sayan  mountains,  the  source  of  the  Amur,  the  reindeer 
reaches  the  southernmost  point  of  its  diffusion,  and  comes  there  in 
contact  with  the  camel  and  tame  yak;  but  he  draws  from  this  fact 
no  conclusion  whatever  as  to  the  home  of  the  domestication,  but 
offers  solely  the  commonplace  remark  that  any  of  the  migratory 
tribes  of  northeastern  Asia  may  have  been  pushed  back  into  an 
inhospitable  country,  and,  losing  its  stock  of  cattle  and  pack- 
animals  owing  to  the  unfavorable  climate,  tamed  the  reindeer  as  a 
substitute. 

The  Soyot  were  visited  and  studied  in  the  summer  of  1914  by 
0rjan  Olsen,  who  published  interesting  information  on  the  tribe.2 
According  to  this  author,  the  breeding  of  reindeer  constitutes  a 
secondary  industry  among  the  Soyot,  who  also  keep  horses  and 
dogs,  in  opposition  to  the  Lapp  and  Samoyed.  Their  herds  are 

1  Haustiere,  p.  266. 

2  Et  primitivt  folk.     De  mongolske  Rennomader  (Kristiania,  1915).     Compare  the 
analysis  of  Ch.  Rabot  in  La  Geographic,  vol.  xxxi  (1916-17),  pp.  42-46. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION 

not  very  numerous.  The  most  fortunate  among  the  inhabitants 
of  the  Sayan  mountains  (and  there  are  few)  own  no  more  than  four 
hundred  animals;  in  general,  the  herds  count  from  ten  to  fifteen 
heads,  at  least  on  the  banks  of  the  Sesti-Kem.  The  people,  ac- 
cordingly, cannot  live  exclusively  on  the  flesh  of  their  herds';  and 
those  on  the  upper  Yenisei  loathe  to  slaughter  their  animals,  unless 
compelled  to  do  so  by  famine.  The  only  alimentary  product  is  the 
milk,  consumed  either  fresh  or  in  the  shape  of  butter  or  cheese. 
One  or  two  large  cupfuls  are  obtained  from  each  operation,  which 
is  performed  twice  a  day  in  an  enclosure  formed  by  wooden  palisades. 
The  reindeer  is  used  by  the  Soyot  as  a  pack  and  riding  animal.1 
It  is  not  attached  to  a  sledge.  The  animal  belongs  to  a  very  sturdy 
breed,  the  largest  being  able  to  carry  loads  from  eighty  to  one 
hundred  and  ten  kilo;  with  such  a  load,  they  make  five  to  six  kilo- 
meters an  hour. 

Among  the  Soyot,  the  domestication  of  the  reindeer  has  pro- 
gressed further  than  among  any  North-Asiatic  tribe.  Although 
they  capture  wild  reindeer  and  cross  these  with  their  domesticated 
individuals,  this  offspring  is  remarkably  little  savage.  Whereas 
other  reindeer  must  be  lassoed  in  order  to  be  caught  for  duty, 
the  Soyot  reindeer  allow  themselves  to  be  caught  by  hand,  and 
follow  their  master  like  dogs,  licking  his  hand  with  the  expectation 
of  a  bit  of  salt.  When  pasturing  in  the  woodland,  a  call  from 
their  owner  is  sufficient  to  make  them  return  immediately.  It  is  a 
notable  feature  also  that  the  domestic  reindeer  of  the  Soyot  terri- 
tory is  capable  of  standing  the  extreme  summer  heat.  At  that 
time  the  wild  reindeer,  which  likewise  occurs  in  the  region  of  the 
sources  of  the  Yenisei,  take  refuge  in  the  snow  zone  of  the  high 
mountains.  The  domesticated  herds  constantly  remain  in  the 
forest,  in  the  proximity  of  human  habitations,  without  suffering 

1  Compare  the  illustrations  in  Olsen,  pp.  52,  73.  According  to  I.  Pesterev 
Magasin  asiatique,  by  J.  Klaproth  (Paris,  1825),  vol.  I,  p.  126,  who  was  commanded 
to  the  Russian-Chinese  frontier  in  the  districts  Udinsk  and  Abakansk  from  1772  to 
1781,  the  nomadic  tribes  near  the  fort  of  Udinsk  (then  belonging  to  the  government 
of  Tobolsk),  divided  into  four  sections,  Silpigursk,  Udinsk,  Karagansk,  and  Kamgatsk, 
kept  domestic  reindeer  from  oldest  times,  the  richest  possessing  a  hundred  animals; 
seven  years  before  his  time  they  lost  the  greatest  part.  He  states  also  that  the  stags 
were  used  for  the  hunt  and  mounted  by  the  hunters. 


128 


AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 


from  the  heat.  During  the  hot  hours  they  rest  under  thickly 
foliated  trees.  In  order  to  protect  the  fawns  from  the  blaze  of  the 
sun,  the  Soyot  erect  hedges  around  large  cedars. 

The  culture  of  the  Soyot,  like  that  of  any  other  people  in  north- 
ern and  central  Asia,  is  in  a  state  of  complete  disintegration,  and 
original  conditions  can  no  longer  be  expected.     What  we  find  at 
present  is  merely  the  weak  echo  of  a  former  glory  which  still  elo- 
quently speaks  to  us  from  the  brief  accounts  of  Marco  Polo,  Rashid- 
/  eddin,  and  the  Chinese  annals.     Itjs  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to 
—  i   credit  any  domestication  to  a  certain  people,  or  even  to  a  certain 
*   stock  of  peoples.     In  the  majority  of  cases  we  must  be  content  to 
trace  the  beginnings  of  a  domestication  to  a  more  or  less  securely 
defined  geographical  area.     In  the  present  case  it  can  be  positively 
stated  only  that  the  primeval  domestication  of  the  reindeer  took 
place  in  the  Baikal  region;  but,  if  the  original  domestication  of  the 

«^ 

reindeer  is  to  be  attached  to  the  name  of  a  tribal  group,  I  should 
venture  to  say  it  was  the  southern  Samoyed,  or  the  Samoyed  in 
the  early  period  of  their  history,  before  migrating  into  their  present 
northern  habitats.  I  do  not  say,  of  course,  that  the  present  Soyot 
were  the  domesticators :  our  knowledge  of  the  history  of  this  tribe 
is  altogether  too  vague  to  admit  of  such  an  interpretation.  The 
Soyot  are  simply  remnants  and  epigones  of  that  once  extended  and 
powerful  family  in  the  midst  of  which  this  fact  was  accomplished. 
The  history  of  the  domestication  can  now  be  clearly  conceived. 
From  the  Samoyed  it  spread  eastward  to  the  Tungusians ;  from  the 
latter  to  the  Yakut,  Chukchi,  and  Koryak;  westward  to  the  Ugrian 
tribes  of  the  Ural  and  the  Lapp.1  Applied  to  the  reindeer,  this 
result  means  that  the  woodland  reindeer  was  domesticated  in  times 
prior  to  the  tundra  reindeer.  When  the  Samoyed  moved  north- 
ward, they  naturally  took  along  their  woodland  reindeer,  and 
gradually  replenished  and  improved  their  old  stock  by  capturing 
wild  tundra  reindeer  (by  the  methods  described  in  the  following 

1  The  peculiar  boat-shaped  sledges  of  the  Lapp,  to  which  G.  Hatt,  "  Lappiske 
slsedeformer,"  Geografi.sk  Tidskrift,  vol.  xxn  (1913),  pp.  139-145,  has  devoted  a 
special  study,  in  my  opinion  are  derived  from  the  Samoyed;  for  A.  Olearius,  Reise- 
Beschreibungen  (Hamburg,  1696),  p.  81,  already  mentions  the  reindeer-sledges  of  the 
Samoyed,  which  are  shaped  like  half  canoes  or  boats. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  1 29 

chapter),  until  a  point  was  reached  when  the  latter  breed  pre- 
ponderated or  prevailed  exclusively. 

The  Ainu  of  Saghalin  do  not  keep  reindeer,  but  only  know  the 
animal  (styled  by  them  tonakai)  in  the  possession  of  the  Tungusian 
Orocon.  It  would  hardly  be  necessary  to  emphasize  this  fact, 
were  it  not  that  A.  E.  von  Nordenskiold1  has  published  the  sketch 
of  an  Ainu  standing  on  large  snowshoes,  and  pulled  along  by  a 
reindeer  the  bridle  of  which  is  tied  to  his  belt.  This  illustration 
is  said  to  be  derived  from  a  Japanese  book  published  in  1804.  In 
regard  to  such  an  employment  of  the  reindeer  onJbe^rjaTt  of  the 
Ainu  I  learned  nothing  on  Saghalin,  nor^^rTMd  any  reference  to 
it  in  the  literature  on  the  Aim^^Even  the  Japanese  traveler 
Mamia  Rinso,  who  visTteS^Saghalin  in  1808,  and  whose  valuable 
account  has  been  made  accessible  by  Ph.  von  Siebold,  gives  no 
information  on  this  point ;  on  the  contrary,  he  mentions  the  reindeer 
only  in  the  possession  of  the  Orotsuko  (Orokko,  Oroki,  Orocon). 
The  sketch  in  question,  accordingly,  is  either  based  on  an  incidental 
and  isolated  occurrence,  or,  which  is  more  probable,  represents  a 
purely  imaginative  artistic  production  in  which  two  features  foreign 
to  the  Japanese — snowshoes  and  reindeer — were  arbitrarily  com- 
bined. 

PROCESS  OF  DOMESTICATION 

We  have  no  contemporaneous  records  showing  how  the  i 
domestication  of  the  reindeer  was  brought  into  effect.  In  order  to 
obtain  some  idea  as  to  how  this  was  done,  or  might  have  been  done,  we 
must  rely  upon  a  reconstructive  method.  One  means  to  this  end 
is  furnished  by  present-day  observations  of  the  training  of  indi- 
vidual animals.  The  schooling  of  the  'individual  is  typical  of  the 
entire  breed,  and  the  course  of  lessons  through  which  each  animal 
has  to  run  at  present  must  have  been  valid,  with  some  variations 
perhaps,  also  ages  ago. 

In  regard  to  the  training  of  the  animals,  S.  Jackson  3  has  the  fol- 
lowing observation : 

1  Umsegelung  Asiens  und  Europas  auf  der  Vega,  vol.  n,  p.  101. 

2  Ph.  von  Siebold,  Nippon,  new  ed.,  vol.  n,  p.  229. 

3  Fourteenth  Annual  Report  on   Introduction  of  Domestic  Reindeer  into  Alaska 
(Washington,  1905),  p.  126. 


130 


AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 


The  training  begins  when  the  deer  is  three  years  old.  Generally  the  stoutest 
males  and  geldings  are  selected.  Females  are  also  trained,  but  they  are  smaller 
and  less  enduring.  The  training  begins  by  lassoing  the  selected  animals,  thus 
separating  them  from  the  herd.  The  poor  beasts  are  much  scared,  and  jump 
about  in  frantic  efforts  to  escape.  The  trainer  advances  hand  over  hand  on  the 
rawhide  lasso  till  the  head  is  reached.  They  are  then  sometimes  given  a  little 
salt,  of  which  they  are  fond;  they  are  then  led  about  for  some  time  or  tied  to  a 
post  to,  accustom  them  to  confinement  and,  the  lesson  over,  again  released. 
This  is  repeated  day  by  day,  and  when  sufficiently  tamed  they  are  harnessed 
and  in  the  same  manner  gradually  accustomed  to  draw  light  loads.  This  takes  a 
long  time  and  persistent  work.  They  should  not  be  worked  before  they  are 
three  years  old.  At  six  or  seven  they  reach  their  prime  and  then  gradually 
decline. 

The  Eskimo  selected  by  the  government  as  apprentices  to  learn 
the  art  of  breeding  reindeer  from  expert  Lapp  reindeer-men  enter 
into  an  agreement  to  remain  from  two  to  five  years,  or  until  suf- 
ficient skill  to  handle  a  herd  is  acquired.1  This  affords  some  idea 
as  to  the  time  required  for  a  man  to  develop  into  a  herder. 

Although  the  reindeer  is  the  only  species  of  the  deer  family 
that  has  been  brought  into  the  state  of  domestication,  there  are 
many  examples  known  of  other  members  of  the  family  Cervidae 
which  develop  a  great  adaptability  to  domestication  and  have  been 
tamed  to  a  high  degree.  Yet  domestication  has  succeeded  only 
in  the  case  of  the  reindeer.  The  efforts  to  raise  other  kinds  of 
deer  are  interesting  to  the  student  of  reindeer-domestication  as 
affording  an  object-lesson  and  showing  us  the  possibilities  in  the 
initial  stages  preceding  the  state  of  true  domestication. 

All  of  the  deer  family  are  easily  tamed.  The  moose  has  often  been  reared 
and  tamed  in  this  country ;  but  I  know  of  no  systematic  attempt  to  domesticate 
them,  nor  have  I  ever  heard  of  their  breeding  in  domestication.  They  have 
been  sometimes  broken  to  the  harness  and  proved  themselves  able  to  draw  good 
loads;  and  yet  I  know  of  no  regular  effort  that  has  been  made  to  reduce  them  to 
servitude.  When  tamed,  they  are  reasonably  docile,  except  the  males  during 
the  rutting  season,  when,  as  might  be  suspected,  they  become  ferocious,  and 
should  be  kept  in  close  quarters  where  they  can  do  no  harm.  If  castrated  young, 
and  early  taught  obedience  to  man,  we  may  not  doubt  that  they  would  readily 
submit  to  his  dominion,  and  their  great  strength  would  give  promise  of  useful 


Ibid.,  p.  128. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  l$l 

beasts  of  draught,  especially  in  countries  where  deep  snows  prevail,  through 
which  they  pass  with  facility  where  ordinary  cattle  could  make  no  progress.1 

A  highly  interesting  notice  on  deer-farming  has  been  written 
by  D.  E.  Lantz.2  In  the  United  States,  the  wapiti  or  Rocky 
Mountain  elk  (Cervus  canadensis)  and  the  Virginia  deer  (Odocoileus 
mrginianus]  are  managed  and  reared  in  enclosures,  chiefly  for  profit 
in  the  sale  of  venison ;  but  also  the  desire  to  preserve  our  vanishing 
game  has  caused  the  confinement  of  small  herds  under  private 
ownership  in  many  places.  The  elk  readily  adapts  itself  to  any 
environment.  It  proves  especially  useful  in  clearing  out  under- 
brush from  thickets,  in  which  they  are  more  useful  than  goats, 
since  they  browse  higher.  The  increase  of  elk,  while  kept  in  pre- 
serves with  surroundings  as  nearly  natural  as  possible,  is  equal  to 
that  of  cattle:  fully  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  females  produce  healthy 
young.  The  male  elk  is  ordinarily  docile,  but  in  the  rutting  season 
the  older  ones  often  become  ill-tempered  and  dangerous.  The 
remedy  for  viciousness  is  castration,  the  effects  of  which  are  that 
the  animal  is  made  docile,  and  its  value  for  venison  is  greatly 
enhanced.  The  stocking  of  parks  and  preserves  with  deer  merely 
for  sport  or  aesthetic  purposes  appeals  much  more  to  a  sensitive 
mind.  The  idea  of  raising  beautiful  animals  like  deer  merely  for 
slaughtering  purposes  is  revolting  and  unsportsmanlike,  and  for 
this  reason  has  no  future.  A  vigorous  propaganda  in  favor  of  the 
destruction  of  some  of  our  finest  game-animals,  which  we  have 
every  reason  to  wish  to  see  preserved,  should  be  combated  in  all 
ways  possible. 

Examples  of  tame  deer  can  be  gathered  from  all  parts  of  the 
world  and  from  all  times.  In  ancient  Italy  herdsmen  reared  does 
(caprea)  on  sheep's  milk,  and  the  wealthy  Romans  were  fond  of 
keeping  them  in  their  parks  together  with  chamois  and  gazelles.3 

1  J.  D.  Caton,  The  Antelope  and  Deer  in  America,  p.  277.     This  author,  further, 
has  interesting  notes  on  efforts  to  tame  caribou,  elk,  and  other  deer. 

2  "  Deer  Farming  in  the  United  States,"  published  by  the  U.  S.  Department  of 
Agriculture,  Farmer's  Bulletin  330  (Washington,  1908),  p.  20.     Compare  also  the  same 
author's  "  Raising  Deer  and  Other  Large  Game  Animals  in  the  United  States,"  pub- 
lished by  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture,  Biological  Survey,  Bull.  No.  36  (Wash- 
ington, 1910),  p.  62. 

3  O.  Keller,  Tiere  des  classischen  Allertums,  p.  103. 


132  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

Tame  stags  are  frequently  mentioned  by  Greeks  and  Romans. 
Sertorius  owned  in  Spain  a  white  deer,  which,  he  made  the  people 
believe,  communicated  prophesies  to  him.  Vergil1  tells  how  a 
stately  stag  was  bathed,  combed,  and  adorned  with  flowers  by 
Silvia,  the  daughter  of  the  head  pastor  Tyrrhus,  and  how  the 
animal  became  accustomed  to  the  master's  hand  and  table.  In 
art,  neck-collars  and  girth  are  repeatedly  represented  on  stags. 
Apollo,  Artemis,  and  Amor  drive  in  chariots  drawn  by  stags  or 
deer.  Heliogabalus  possessed  a  chariot  pulled  by  four  powerful 
stags;  and  Aurelian,  in  his  triumph  over  Zenobia,  drove  with  a 
team  of  four  tame  stags  which  had  once  belonged  to  a  king  of  the 
Goth.2  Columella3  says  that  wild  animals,  like  roes,  antelopes, 
stags,  and  boars,  are  kept  either  for  one's  pleasure  or  for  sale  and 
profit.  In  the  former  case,  any  hedged  place  near  one's  homestead 
is  sufficient,  and  the  animals  receive  food  and  drink  from  one's 
hand;  a  plot  of  woodland  with  running  water,  walled  around  or 
fenced  with  pallisades,  must  be  set  aside  for  the  game. 

The  genus  Dama,  which  originally  appears  to  have  been  re- 
stricted to  the  Mediterranean  countries  and  Persia,  has  been  intro- 
duced into  western  and  central  Europe,  where  it  exists  in  a  semi- 
domesticated  condition  as  far  north  as  the  British  Islands  and  the 
south  of  Sweden. 

Owing  to  long  domestication  [read  "taming"],  the  fallow  deer  of  the  British 
parks  frequently  display  great  variation  from  the  original  type  of  coloration, 
and  a  uniformly  dark  brown  breed  has  been  long  established,  while  white  or 
whitish  varieties  are  far  from  uncom  ;:  :.i. 

Tamed  deer  were  kept  and  fed  by  the  hermits  of  ancient  India. 
The  deer-park  near  Rajagriha  in  which  Buddha  used  to  dwell  is 
familiar  to  all  readers  of  Buddhist  literature.  The  kings  of  India 
built  special  stables  for  deer  on  the  west  side  of  their  palaces.5 

West  of  Tokmak  the  Turkish  Khans  of  the  seventh  century 
maintained  a  summer  residence  with  a  park  of  tame  harts  provided 

1  Aeneis,  vn,  483. 

2  Keller,  1.  c.,  p.  90;  and  Antike  Tierwelt,  vol.  i,  p.  278. 

3  De  re  rustica,  ix,  i. 

4  R.  Lydekker,  Catalogue  of  the  Ungulate  Mammals  in  the  British  Museum  (Lon- 
don, 1915),  vol.  iv,  p.  229. 

6  B.  K.  Sarkar,  The  Sukramti  (Allahabad,  1914).  P-  3O. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  133 

with  bells  and  rings, — in  the  words  of  the  Buddhist  pilgrim  Hiian 
Tsang,  "  familiar  with  men  and  not  fleeing  at  their  sight."  The 
Khan,  being  very  fond  of  them,  forbade  his  subjects  to  kill  them  on 
pain  of  death  without  remission.1 

The  Island  Mijo,  or  Aki-no  Mijo  (so  called  from  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  province  Aki),  is  famous  for  a  particular  breed  of 
deer,  which  they  say  are  very  tame  and  familiar  with  the  inhabi- 
tants. It  is  contrary  to  the  laws  of  the  country  to  chase  and  to 
kill  them.2 

In  several  places  of  the  Altai,  the  maral  (Cervus  elaphus)  is 
reared  in  captivity  in  consequence  of  the  large  demand  for  its 
antlers  on  the  part  of  the  Chinese,  who  are  said  to  pay  as  much  as 
150  rubles  for  a  pair,  and  employ  it  for  medicinal  purposes.  Taming 
and  feeding  the  animals  are  said  to  be  easy;  the  antlers  are  cut  off 
in  their  third  year,  the  operation  being  without  harm  for  the 
animals.3  The  Chinese  have  many  stories  in  regard  to  tame  deer, 
which  were  even  used  for  drawing  carriages.  In  mythology,  gods 
and  fairies  ride  on  deers'  backs.4  Some  tribes  of  Formosa  practised 
the  capturing  of  harts  alive,  and  dexterity  in  this  feat  was  regarded 
as  a  manly  virtue  highly  extolled  by  folk-songs.5 

It  is  not  necessary  to  multiply  these  examples.  Those  given 
illustrate  sufficiently  the  fact  that  many  species  of  deer  exhibit  a 
high  degree  of  adaptability,  and  that  in  diverse  parts  of  the  world 
and  at  different  times  efforts  have  been  made  to  tame  them  and 
to  keep  them  as  pets  in  parks  mainly  for  aesthetic  reasons.  In 
the  case  of  every  domestication,  the  animal  deserves  as  much 
credit  as  man;  an  animal  unqualified  for  the  status,  and  without 
sympathetic  instincts  for  man,  cannot  be  domesticated. 

1  S.  Julien,  Memoir es  sur  les  contrees  occidentales,  vol.  I,  p.  14;  S.  Beal,  Records 
of  Western  Countries,  vol.  i,  p.  28;  Chavannes,  Documents  sur  les  Tou-kiue  (Turcs) 
occidentaux,  p.  120. 

2  E.  Kaempfer,  History  of  Japan  (Glasgow  edition),  vol.  I,  p.  200. 

3  A.   Printz,  Erman's  Archiv  fur  wissenschaftl.  Kunde  von  Russland,   vol.  xxv, 
1867,  p.  294;  A.  Jarilow,  Beitrag  zur  Landwirtschaft  in  Sibirien,  r.    319. 

4  An  interesting  article  on  Chinese  notions  of  cervines  is  by  M.  Cibot,  "  Notice 
sur  le  cerf,"  in  Memoires  concernant  les  Chinois  (Paris,  1788),  vol.  xui,  pp.  402—408. 

6  K.  Florenz,  "  Formosanische  Volkslieder,"  Mitt.  D.  Ges.  Ostasiens,  vol.  vu, 
(1898-99),  p.  122. 


134  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

The  following  case  presents  a  good  example  as  to  how  primitive 
man  may  have  managed  to  get  possession  of  wild  reindeer  alive. 
The  ancient  Kitan  and  Jurci  (Niiici)  of  Manchuria  had  a  peculiar 
method  of  hunting  deer  by  imitating  its  belling,  and  killing  with 
arrow-shots  the  animal  thus  allured.1 

A  lively  description  of  this  manner  of  hunting  was  given  in  the 
eighteenth  century  by  C.  Visdelou2  as  follows: 

The  Niuci  were  always  celebrated  for  a  sort  of  hunting  peculiar  to  their 
nation.  The  same  method  is  still  appropriate  solely  to  the  Manchu.  These 
tell  the  following  story  as  a  well-substantiated  fact.  Briefly  before  the  rutting- 
season  each  stag  will  establish  a  seraglio  of  does  and  occupy  a  stretch  of  forest 
or  mountain.  After  this  division  there  are  stags  left  who  either  did  not  receive 
their  share  or  were  robbed  of  their  spoils.  Each  is  intent  on  acquiring  a  terri 
tory  by  right  of  conquest.  He  invades  the  district  of  one  of  his  neighbors.  On 
entering  it  he  utters  a  cry  as  a  challenge  for  combat.  A  courageous  owner  does 
not  await  another  call,  but  will  pounce  on  the  intruder  instantaneously.  Mean- 
while the  does  will  line  themselves  up  in  two  rows  to  watch  the  duel.  The 
adversary  being  put  to  flight  or  thrown  to  the  ground,  his  does  will  pass  over  to 
the  victor.  The  Manchu  take  a  stag's  head  with  the  antlers,  hollow  it  out,  and 
place  it  over  their  own  head.  With  a  hidden  decoy  whistle  they  imitate  the 
call  of  a  stag  so  perfectly  that  the  animal  is  deceived.  They  crouch  in  the  thicket, 
and  at  the  sound  of  the  whistle  the  stag  comes  out  in  the  open  for  an  attack, 
sometimes  so  precipitately  and  furiously  that  the  hunter  has  no  time  to  make 
use  of  his  weapons.  He  who  is  thus  surprised  is  usually  lost  and  torn  to  pieces. 
During  his  youth  the  Emperor  K'ang-hi  once  risked  his  life  on  such  a  hunt,  which 
takes  place  annually.  The  Manchu  affirm  that  the  best,  largest,  and  strongest 

1  H.  C.  v.  d.  Gabelentz,  Geschichte  der  grossen  Liao,  pp.  98,  154;  Chavannes,  "  Voy- 
ageurs  chinois    chez    les    Khitan,"  Journal  asiatique  (mai-juin,   1897),  p.  404;    also 
Klaproth,  Tableaux  historiques  de  I'Asie,  p.  90.     In  the  latter's  translation  appears  a 
zoological  puzzle  by  which  no  one  as  yet  seems  to  have  been  struck.     According  to 
Klaproth,  the  Jurci  subsisted  on  the  flesh  of  the  stags,  and  prepared  an  intoxicating 
beverage  from  the  milk  of  the  does.     The  question  as  to  how  it  was  possible  to  milk  a 
wild  animal  did  not  alarm  the  learned  sinologue.     In  fact,  the  Chinese  author,  the 
traveler  Hu  Kiao,  who  lived  among  the  barbarians  of  the  north  from  947  to  953, 
did  not  write  this  nonsense.     The  text  of  the  Wu  tai  ski  (ch.  73,  p.  3  b),  in  which  his 
account  is  embodied,  simply  contains  a  misprint  (mi  1j$ ,  Cervus  davidianu*,  instead 
of  mi,  "  millet  ");  and  the  passage  means,  as  rendered  by  Chavannes,  "  They  make  a 
fermented   beverage  from  a   decoction  of  millet."     Schlegel   (T'oung  Pao,   vol.   in 
(1894),  ,p.  141),  citing  the  same  passage  after  Ma  Tuan-lin,  arbitrarily  takes  the  term 
mi  in  the  sense  of  "  reindeer,"  and  thinks  that  the  Jurci  distilled  an  alcoholic  beverage 
from  reindeer's  milk.     As  to  the  other  animals  mentioned  by  Hu  Kiao  in  this  region, 
the  "  wild  dogs  "  (ye  kou),  I  believe,  represent  Canis  procyonoides. 

2  In  d'Herbelot,  Bibliotheque  orientale  (La  Haye,  1789),  vol.  iv,  p.  292. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  135 

stags  are  brought  in  from  these  hunting-expeditions,  and  that  there  is  no  finer 
sight  than  the  majesty,  pride,  and  intrepidity  of  these  animals  when  coming 
forward  to  fight, — a  quality  less  conspicuous  at  other  times. 

G.  Radde1  reports  that  during  the  rutting  season  the  hunters  of 
the  Sayan,  Baikal,  Yabloko,  and  Chingan  mountains  avail  them- 
selves of  slightly  curved  horns  made  from  fir  or  larch  wood;2  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Amur  they  use  also  the  thick,  hollow  stems  of 
the  Kongola-Umbelle  (Calisace  daurica).  At  this  time  the  stag  is 
not  timid,  and  approaches  the  hidden  sportsman  at  a  short  distance. 
Old  stags,  however,  do  not  easily  accept  this  challenge  to  battle, 
and  are  said  to  discriminate  well  between  the  call  of  the  hunters 
and  their  own  kind.  The  Mongols  avail  themselves  of  a  whistle 
(called  urum  or  urum-dal)  to  attract  the  hart,  or  also  imitate  his 
cry. 

According  to  the  reminiscences  of  the  Lapp,  they  received  their 
domesticated  reindeer  from  the  wild  animal.  Johan  Turi  narrates 
in  his  autobiography  (p.  64), 

In  ancient  times  there  were  many  wild  reindeer,  and  there  was  no  one  who 
cared  to  guard  reindeer.  And  the  Lapp  learned  how  to  make  the  wild  reindeer 
feel  safe,  so  that  they  remained  in  his  herd.  When  a  wild  reindeer  has  joined 
the  herd,  it  is  necessary  to  go  cautiously  around  the  herd  and  to  allow  it  to  walk 
ahead  quite  a  distance,  that  the  wild  reindeer  does  not  know  that  men  are  near. 
When  the  wild  animal  has  visited  the  herd,  it  is  familiar  with  it,  and  does  not 
move  away  even  when  seeing  men.  Not  all  wild  reindeer,  however,  are  equally 
bold;  some  never  become  confiding,  however  long  they  may  remain  with  the 
herd,  but  some  it  takes  only  little  time  to  become  accustomed  to  reindeer  and 
man;  neither  does  it  run  away  unless  it  should  drift  into  a  troup  of  wild  reindeer; 
in  this  case  it  follows  the  wild  ones.  The  timid  ones  can  never  be  tamed.  The 
wild  ones  are  much  larger  than  the  domesticated  stock,  and  more  glossy,  as 
though  having  silver  hair.  A  few  of  those  which  cannot  be  rendered  tame  were 
obtained  in  this  manner,  that  a  wild  reindeer  bull  visited  the  herd  in  the  rutting 
season.  And  when  a  wild  reindeer  is  in  the  herd,  the  latter  need  not  be  guarded. 

Johan  Turi  continues  (p.  65), 

A  Lapp  sojourned  in  the  vicinity  of  Koutokaino,  and  he  would  annually 

1  Reisen  im  Suden  von  Ost-Sibirien,  vol.  i,  p.  284.     Radde  has  transcribed  the 
call  in  notes.     See  also  A.  von  Middendorff,  Sibirische  Rehe,  vol.  iv,  p.  1390. 

2  According  to  the  Ta  Kin  kuo  chi  (ch.  39,  p.  i;  written  in  1234  by  Yii-wen  Mou- 
chao),  the  Jurci  made  horns  from  birchbark,  on  which  they  produced  sounds  like 
yu-yu,  in  order  to  allure  the  harts  (mi-lu),  and  then  to  shoot  them  with  bow  and 
arrow.     Yu-yu  is  a  Chinese  term  of  endearment  for  a  tame  deer. 


136  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

allow  the  reindeer  to  mate  on  a  strip  of  land  in  the  Elf.  A  wild  reindeer  always 
appeared  during  the  mating-season  for  several  years,  and  he  did  not  kill  him. 
Somebody,  however,  killed  him  at  last.  And  the  Lapp  regarded  this  as  a  much 
more  deplorable  loss  than  if  it  had  been  one  of  his  own  bulls.  Yet  he  received 
offspring  from  the  wild  reindeer.  His  deer  became  as  glossy  and  slender  as  wild 
reindeer;  it  was  quite  extraordinary  reindeer,  and  every  one  envied  him  for  his 
reindeer,  since  they  were  much  finer  than  others. 

While  this  account  proves  nothing  for  the  origin  of  the  domesti- 
cation, it  shows  clearly  that  the  old  stock  was  renewed  and  re- 
cruited from  wild  material,  and  that  a  great  number  of  wild  animals 
were  gradually  absorbed  by  the  Lapp.     In  this  respect  also  Oh- 
there's  account  given  above  (p.  95)  is  of  fundamental  value. 
.^  Aside  from  battues,   the  Samoyed  have  conceived  a  peculiar 
.^ method  of  capturing  wild  reindeer.     They  train  four  or  five  tame, 
/  usually  female,  reindeer  in  such  a  manner  that  they  walk  together 

around  the  hunter  in  a  certain  order.  One  walks  ahead,  being 
held  by  a  rope  many  fathoms  long,  the  others  going  at  the  side 
of  the  hunter,  who  fastens  to  his  girdle  the  ropes  of  all  animals. 
The  hunter,  clad  in  reindeer-skins  and  bending  low,  steals  along 
as  near  as  he  can  to  the  wild  herd,  and  picks  out  the  best  specimen 
for  his  shot.  During  the  rutting  season  the  Samoyed  select  a 
strong,  ungelded  buck,  and  look  for  a  wild  herd.  When  such  is 
sighted,  slings  are  laid  around  the  antlers  of  the  buck  and  attached 
by  means  of  loose  bast.  Thus  he  is  set  on  the  wild  herd.  The 
wild  stag,  being  aware  of  the  alien  rival,  challenges  him  to  a  duel. 
During  the  brawl,  his  antlers  become  entangled  in  the  slings  of  the 
tame  pseudo-opponent,  who  will  press  his  antlers  toward  the 
ground,  and  thus  hold  the  adversary  till  the  hunter  arrives.1 

The  Ostyak  have  developed  a  similar  method,  or  rather  adopted 
it  from  the  Samoyed.  They  fasten  to  their  tame  deer  a  strap 
between  the  upper  tips  of  the  antlers,  and  allow  them  to  disperse 
near  a  herd  of  wild  ones.  These  rush  on  the  strangers,  and,  during 
the  struggle,  entangle  their  antlers  in  the  straps  prepared,  being 
held  till  the  arrival  of  their  captors.2  A  similar  method  prevails 

1  P.  S.  Pallas,  Reise  durch  verschiedene  Provinzen  des  russischen  Reichs  (1776), 
vol.  in,  p.  91. 

2  A.  Erman,  Reise  um  die  Welt,  vol.  i,  pt.  i,  p.  653. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  137 

among  the  Amur  tribes.  In  the  autumn  and  the  spring  the  native 
hunters  indulge  in  the  chase  of  wild  reindeer  by  means  of  tame  ones. 
The  latter  are  let  loose,  but  held  with  a  long  strap  by  the  hunter, 
who  cautiously  follows  behind  in  their  trail.  According  to  his 
will,  the  reindeer  is  made  to  pasture,  to  lie  down,  to  stand  up,  and 
to  turn  round  in  this  or  that  direction.  The  skilful  hunter  can 
thus  slay  many  wild  deer  before  his  presence  is  suspected  by  the 
herd.1  V.  Jochelson2  has  described  the  same  procedure  for  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Kolyma  district,  where  the  decoy  animal  is 
known  under  the  name  man'scik  (probably  from  Russian  manit', 
"  to  lure  "),  in  the  language  of  the  Lamut  ondadd.  Thus  the 
practice  is  universal  throughout  Siberia.  This  method  may  illus- 
trate how  the  decoys  of  Ohthere  were  used  (p.  95),  and  how  primi- 
tive man  at  all  times  understood  how  to  add  a  fresh  supply  to  his 
stock.  What  method  he  employed  in  detail  for  breaking  his  deer 
certainly  escapes  our  knowledge.  Some  of  his  methods  have  been 
alluded  to,  as  gelding  and  the  imitation  of  processes  gained  b1 
experience  with  other  domestications. 

An  interesting  problem  is  whether  reindeer-driving  is  to  be 
conceived  as  an  imitation  of  the  method  of  driving  on  dog-sledges. 
In  regard  to  the  latter  we  possess  unfortunately  little  historical 
material.  We  have  seen  that  dog-sleighs  were  known  among  the 
Kirgiz  in  the  thirteenth  century  (p.  in)  and  in  northwestern  Siberia 
in  1499  (p.  97),  and  that  they  even  extended  to  the  west  of  the 
Ural  in  ancient  times.3  Driving  with  dogs  is  practised  throughout 
Siberia.  As  is  well  known,  the  dog  was  originally  the  sole  domestic 
animal  kept  by  the  so-called  Palaeo- Asiatic  peoples,  the  Ainu, 
Gilyak,  Kamchadal,  Yenisei-Ostyak,4  Yukagir,  Koryak,  and  Chuk- 

1  Grum-Grzimailo,  Opisanie  Amurskoi  Oblasti,  pp.  334,  335. 

2  Ocerk  zv' dropromyslennosti  i  lorgovli  m'axami  v  Kolymskom  okrug' a  (Sketch  of 
the  Animal  Industry  and  Fur  Trade  in  the  District  of  Kolyma),  p.  44- 

3  These  data  escaped  L.  von  Schrenck  (Reisen'und  Forschungen  im  Amur-Lande, 
vol.  in,  p.  488)  in  his  discussion  as  to  the  time  when  the  Russians  became  acquainted 
with  dog-driving;  he  does  not  go  beyond  the  seventeenth  century.     S.  von  Herber- 
stein  (Notes  upon  Rtissia,  vol.  n,  p.  46)  mentions  large  dogs  used  as  beasts  of  burden, 
"which  are  very  useful  for  this  purpose,  with  which  they  convey  baggage  in  carriages, 
in  the  same  manner  as  will  be  hereafter  described  in  speaking  of  the  deer." — Compare 
above,  p.  99. 

4  J.  Klaproth,  Asia  polyglolta  (Paris,  1823),  p.  167,  stated  that  the  Yenisei-Ostyak 


138  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

chi;  and  dog-sleighs  represent  the  exclusive  means  of  land  trans- 
portation among  these  tribes.  The  same  condition  is  found  among 
the  Eskimo,  while  the  tame  reindeer  is  unknown  to  them.  From 
this  wide  geographical  distribution  covering  the  Old  and  New 
Worlds  it  necessarily  follows  that  the  employment  of  the  dog 
for  the  sledge  is  far  older  in  time  than  that  of  the  reindeer  for  the 
same  purpose.  Although  strictly  mathematical  proof  cannot  be 
put  forward,  the  ethnographical  facts  well  warrant  the  conclusion 
that  the  reindeer-sledge  is  based  on  the  dog-sledge,  and  that  rein- 
deer-driving sprang  into  existence  as  a  perfectly  conscious  and 
volitional  imitation  of  driving  with  dogs.  This  being  the  case, 
it  is  clear  that  the  reindeer  people  must  have  profited  from  the 
experiences  of  the  dog-drivers,  and  reproduced  many  of  their 
methods.1 

subsist  on  fishing,  hunting,  and  to  a  small  extent  reindeer-breeding.  Recent  authors 
say  nothing  about  this  point,  but  mention  only  fishing  and  hunting,  with  the  dog  as 
the  exclusive  domestic  animal  (S.  Patkanov,  Essai  d'une  statistique  et  d'une  geographic 
des  peuples  palae-asiatiques  (St.-Petersbourg,  1903),  p.  9).  The  peculiar  language  of 
this  group  has  been  studied  by  M.  A.  Castren,  Versuch  einer  Yenisej-ostjakischen  und 
kotlischen  Sprachlehre  (St.-Petersburg,  1858).  G.  I.  Ramstedt  "  Ueber  den  Ursprung 
der  sog.  Jenisej-Ostjaken,"  Journal  de  la  Societe  finno-ougrienne,  vol.  xxiv,  1907,  pp. 
1-6,  has  made  the  singular  attempt  to  compare  the  Yenisei-Ostyak  numerals  from 
two  to  ten  with  those  of  Tibetan  and  Chinese,  and  to  proclaim  on  the  basis  of  this 
result  the  Yenisei-Ostyak  as  a  branch  of  the  Indo-Chinese  family.  The  alleged  coin- 
cidences are  by  no  means  convincing,  and  either  do  not  exist  at  all,  or  are  mere  re- 
semblances on  paper;  not  phonetical,  however.  It  would  hardly  be  worth  while  to 
•call  attention  to  this  fantasy  if  the  author  were  not  a  good  philologist,  whose  contri- 
butions to  Mongol  phonology  and  dialects  command  respect. 

1  Two  extraordinary  statements  in  respect  to  reindeer-driving  are  made  by  the 
Jesuit  Philippe  Avril,  Ttavels  into  Divers  Parts  of  Europe  and  Asia  (London,  1693), 
p.  172,  English  translation  of  his  Voyage  en  divers  etats  d'Europe  et  d'Asie  (Utrecht, 
1673,  and  Paris,  1692).  "  To  make  the  reine-deer  go  more  swift,  they  tie  a  great  dog 
behind,  that  scaring  the  poor  beast  with  his  barking,  sets  her  a  running  with  that 
speed,  as  to  draw  her  burthen  no  less  then  forty  leagues  a  day."  "  But  that  which 
is  more  wonderful  as  to  these  sort  of  sledds,  they  are  also  driven  along  by  the  wind 
sometimes  over  the  land  cover'd  with  snow,  sometimes  over  the  ice  of  frozen  rivers, 
as  our  vessels,  that  sail  upon  the  sea.  For  in  regard  the  country  beyond  Siberia  is 
open  and  extreamly  level  as  far  as  Mount  Caucasus,  the  people  who  inhabit  it  making 
use  of  this  advantage  to  spare  their  beasts,  have  so  order'd  their  sledds,  as  either 
to  be  drawn  along  by^the  reine-deer,  or  else  to  carry  sails,  when  the  wind  favours 
'em."  I  cannot  find  any  confirmation  of  this  dog  contrivance  and  of  sail  sledges  in 
any  other  source.  Avril  was  commissioned  by  the  then  King  of  France  to  discover 
a  new  way  by  land  into  China,  left  Marseilles  in  1664,  reached  Moscow,  where  he 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  139 

The  advantages  of  reindeer  over  dog  keeping  are  obvious.  The 
reindeer  feeds  itself,  the  dog  must  be  fed.  In  traveling,  food  must 
be  carried  for  the  dogs.  The  maintenance  of  dogs  develops  into  a 
burdensome  task.  In  case  of  emergency  the  reindeer  will  furnish 
food  to  his  master. 

As  soon  as  the  wind  blows  a  little,  the  dog  cannot  travel;  especially  is  this 
so  if  the  wind  happens  to  be  in  the  face.  The  deer  does  not  mind  the  wind  in 
the  least,  from  whatever  direction  it  comes;  it  rather  enjoys  travelling  against 
the  wind.  It  costs  nothing  for  feed;  it  faces  all  weather,  and  makes  its  way 
where  the  driver  can  hardly  walk  without  snowshoes.  It  goes  uphill  and  down- 
hill alike.  Trail  or  no  trail,  it  will  haul  its  two  hundred  pounds  or  more  day 
after  day,  even  week  after  week.1 

It  is  not  to  the  point  that,  as  asserted  by  G.  Mortillet2  after  K. 
Vogt,  reindeer-breeding  is  impossible  without  the  use  of  the  watch- 
dog. In  fact,  only  the  western _group  of  reindeer-tribes — Lapp, 
Wogul,  Ostyak,  and  Samoyed — have  their  herds  managed  by  dogs; 
while  neither  the  Tungus  nor  the  Koryak  and  Chukchi  have  their 
reindeer  chaperoned  by  dogs;  on  the  contrary,  they  keep  these 
away  from  the  herds.3  With  me  it  is  not  an  open  question,  as 
stated  by  Bogoras,  whether  reindeer-breeding  was  begun  with  dogs 
or  without  them.  The  dog,  in  my  estimation  at  least,  had^nothing 
to  do  with  the  incipient  process.  He  is  merely  an  incidental 
accessory,  being  transferred  from  his  office  previously  held  in  other 
herds  to  the  guarding  of  reindeer  long  after  the  latter's  domestica- 
tion was  completed. 

As  regards  the  employment  of  the  reindeer  for  riding  purposes, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  existed  at  least  as  early  as  the  thir- 
teenth century  in  the  Baikal  region  (p.  107).  The  only  moot  point 

was  compelled  to  return,  and  traveled  by  way  of  Warsaw  to  Constantinople,  reaching 
Toulon  in  1670.  The  information  supplied  by  him  on  Siberia  was  gathered  in  Russia, 
for  the  most  part  from  oral  accounts.  In  his  biography  (Biographic  universelle. 
Supplement,  vol.  LVI,  p.  605)  it  is  said,  "  Ce  qu'il  dit  sur  1'histoire  naturelle  montre 
que  ses  connaissances  en  ce  genre  n'etaient  pas  tres  etendues."  Nevertheless  his 
book  is  full  of  interest  and  teems  with  curious  information  (see,  for  instance,  T'oung 
Pao  (1916),  p.  363)- 

1  Fourteenth  Annual   Report  on   Introduction   of  Domestic  Reindeer  into  Alaska 
(Washington,  1905),  p.  105. 

2  La  Piehistorique,  p.  439. 

3  Bogoras,  Jesup  North  Pacific  Expedition,  vol.  vu,  p.  71* 


AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

is  whether  this  practice  is  primarily  due  to  the  southern  Samoyed 
or  to  Tungusians.1  Since  the  northern  Samoyed  do  not  ride  the 
reindeer,  it  would  seem  that  the  claim  of  the  Tungusians  merits 
preference;  but  this  conclusion  would  be  fallacious.  The  northern 
Samoyed  are  mentioned  as  early  as  1096  in  the  Russian  chronicle  of 
Nestor,  and  it  is  therefore  conceivable  that  the  northward  migra- 
tion of  this  stock  was  an  accomplished  fact  at  a  time  when  the 
reindeer  wras  not  yet  trained  to  the  saddle  in  their  southern  home; 
or,  in  other  words,  that  the  riding  of  the  reindeer  in  the  Baikal 
region  came  into  existence  after  the  separation  of  the  Samoyed 
tribes,  and  for  this  reason  never  reached  the  northern  group. 
Thus  the  question  as  to  the  particular  people  which  first  mounted 
the  reindeer  must  remain  undecided;  assuredly  it  was  a  tribe  that 
had  gained  some  experience  with  horses.  It  is  said  that  it  takes 
the  reindeer  only  a  very  short  time  to  become  accustomed  to  the 
saddle.2 

Although  truly  in  a  state  of  domestication,  it  can  by  no  means 
be  asserted  that  the  reindeer  has  been  brought  fully  under  the 
control  of  man.  On  the  contrary,  the  reindeer  controls  man  to  a 
much  higher  degree  than  man  has  sway  over  the  animal,  and  in 
fact  determines  his  whole  manner  of  life.  In  this  respect  reindeer- 
keeping  differs  radically  from  cattle  or  horse  breeding.  Cattle  and 
horse  have  been  subordinated  to  human  will  so  completely  that 
they  cannot  subsist  without  being  provided  by  man  with  fodder 
and  shelter.  They  share  man's  habitation,  and  stable-feeding  has 
made  them  the  close  associates  and.  friends  of  his  home.  To  the 
reindeer  man  does  not  furnish  lodging  and  board.  It  remains 
independent,  and  pursues  its  natural  instincts  along  the  question 
of  nutrition ;  it  is  not  sheltered  from  the  inclemencies  of  the  weather 
by  house  or  tent,  but  spends  the  night  like  its  wild  congener.  In 
short,  it  makes  and  lives  its  own  life,  only  to  answer  its  master's 
call  when  occasion  for  labor  arises.  It  performs  its  duties  willingly 

1  N.  V.  Latkin,   Yeniseiskaya  Guberniya,  p.   169,  includes  also  the  Dolgan  and 
Yakut  among  the  reindeer-riders.     If  this  is  the  case,  it  is  certainly  due  to  Tungusian 
influence.     An  example  of  reindeer-riding  Yakut  is  found  in  the  autobiography  of  the 
Yakut  Uvarovski  (O.  Bohtlingk,  Sprache  der  Jakuten,  pp.  26,  49). 

2  Latkin,  I.  c. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  14! 

and  submissively;  but  as  soon  as  the  short  working-hours  are  past, 
it  demands  its  freedom,  and  must  be  released  for  grazing  and 
browsing:  it  cannot  be  held  in  socage  indefinitely.  The  reindeer's 
life  is  bound  to  a  well-defined  geographical  area  with  specific  floristic 
characteristics,  and  it  cannot  be  removed  to  other  quarters  without 
its  existence  becoming  endangered.  Individuals  taken  into  our 
zoological  parks,  even  if  provided  with  moss,  do  not  thrive  long, 
and  are  usually  doomed  after  a  few  years;  while  transplantations 
of  herds  into  Switzerland,  for  instance,  have  proved  failures.  The 
reindeer  cannot  live  in  captivity,  it  cannot  be  acclimated  to  un- 
congenial zones,  and  will  never  approach  that  state  of  true  domes- 
ticity attained  in  cattle  and  horse.  If  domestication  be  taken  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word,  "  habituation  to  home-life,"  the  rein- 
deer has  certainly  not  reached  it,  quite  in  conformity  with  its 
master. 

In  view  of  the  reindeer's  economic  independence,  the  inter- 
esting question  arises:  What  forces  bind  the  animal  to  man?  If 
it  receives  from  him  neither  food  nor  shelter,  by  what  factors  is  it 
induced  to  maintain  such  a  seemingly  unprofitable  association? 
Indeed,  the  reindeer's  position  is  singular.  Examining  other 
domestic  breeds,  we  plainly  recognize  the  foundation  of  their  social 
contract  with  man,  which  is  based  on  an  unwritten  law  of  reci- 
procity, that  on  both  sides  has  developed  into  the  quality  of  faith- 
fulness. Dog,  cat,  and  swine  have  reserved  to  themselves  a  certain 
degree  of  independence  in  the  choice  of  their  diet,  and  if  forsaken 
by  man,  or  even  while  under  his  care,  may  hunt  for  a  meal  on 
their  own  initiative;  nevertheless  they  will  always  appreciate  more 
what  is  offered  them  by  man.  Reindeer  are  fond  of  salt  and 
sugar,  and  a  bit  of  these  articles  may  accelerate  their  run;  but 
they  are  so  rarely  given  to  them,  that  this  could  hardly  be  thought 
of  as  an  inducement  for  them  to  keep  up  companionship  with  man.1 
It  may  be,  then,  that  it  believes  in  man  as  a  superior  being,  that  it 
trusts  in  his  power  and  strength,  and  looks  up  to  him  as  his  guardian 
from  perils  threatening  from  wild  animals,  chiefly  its  arch-enemy 

1  Hahn,  Hausliere,  pp.  558-559,  regards  the  animal's  craving  for  salt,  satisfied  by 
human  urine,  as  the  strongest  bond  that  binds  it  to  the  service  of  man,— doubtless  an 
exaggeration. 


142  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

the  wolf.  But  even  this  argument,  weighty  as  it  may  be,  does  not 
seem  to  me  sufficient  to  explain  the  whole  scale  of  the  reindeer's 
relation  to  man.  It  seems  to  me  that  psychic  qualities  both  in  the 
animal  and  in  man  must  be  made  responsible  for  the  final  result. 
There  is  man's  aesthetic  pleasure  in  animals,  and  the  entire  deer 
family  is  attractive  to  every  human  soul.  This  sympathy  is  doubt- 
less reciprocated  by  the  reindeer.  Above  all,  there  is  the  social 
instinct  developed  both  in  deer  and  man,  and  in  the  loneliness  of 
the  arctic  regions  these  social  bonds  are  doubtless  intensified.  The 
deer  is  a  highly  social  creature,  impressing  its  friendship  on  man. 
It  is  of  gentle  disposition,  and  is  loved  by  children.  Those  of  the 
Tungus  are  fond  of  decorating  their  riding-deer  with  ribbons  to 
which  are  sewed  glass  beads  or  buttons.1 

Not  much  positive  information  is  available  in  regard  to  feral 
reindeer.  The  Lapp,  Johan  Turi,  in  his  fascinating  autobiography 
(p.  40),  speaks  of  the  savage  character  of  the  bulls  during  the 
rutting  season,  when  they  even  pounce  on  men,  and  observes  that 
the  "  bulls  of  the  wilderness  "  (that  is,  animals  which  have  segre- 
gated from  the  herd  and  lived  long  in  the  wilderness  without  man's 
care)  particularly  are  prone  to  attack  people. 

In  accordance  with  the  history  of  the  domestication,  the  tending 
of  the  herd,  and  the  care  of  everything  connected  with  it,  are  every- 
where the  business  of  man.  Among  the  Chukchi,  labor  is  divided 
between  man  and  wife  in  this  manner:  that  all  domestic  affairs, 
inclusive  of  preparation  of  hides,  yarn,  and  clothing,  fall  to  the 
lot  of  woman;  while  man  looks  after  the  herd,  harnesses  or  un- 
harnesses the  deer,  and,  if  necessary,  slaughters  it.  This  is  man's 
sole  business,  but  his  time  is  fully  occupied  with  it.2 

To  dilate  on  the  effects  of  reindeer-breeding  is  beyond  the  scope 
of  this  article.  This  would  mean  to  set  forth  in  detail  the  eco- 
nomic features  of  the  culture  of  the  tribes  in  question,  which  has 
been  done  in  a  number  of  excellent  monographs.  I  should  like  to 
emphasize  merely  a  single  point;  and  that  is,  that  in  my  estimation 
the  reindeer-breeders  have  developed  higher  psychic  qualities 

1  Pekarski  and  Tsv'atkov,  Ocerki  byta  Priayanskix  Tungusov,  p.  39. 

2  G.  Maydell,  Reisen  und  Forschungen  im  Jakutskhchen  Gebiet  Ostribiriens,  pt.  i, 
pp.  186-187. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  143 

than  the  PalaeoAsiatic  dog-breeders,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
latter,  as  agreed  upon  by  all  observers,  have  no  inward  relations  to 
their  dogs,  and  their  savage  dogs  lack  all  superior  traits  of  the 
civilized  dog,  while  there  is  mutual  affection  between  man  and 
reindeer.  I  do  not  believe  in  generalizations  nor  in  comparisons, 
still  less  in  dogmas  of  racial  superiority  and  inferiority  or  of  good 
and  evil,  and  I  am  very  far  from  extolling  the  reindeer  tribes  at 
the  expense  of  the  dog-breeders.  Of  these  the  Gilyak  and  Ainu 
are  known  to  me  from  personal  experience,  also  the  Olca  and  Golde 
on  the  Amur,  whose  culture  is  partially  based  on  the  maintenance 
of  dogs.  I  gained  a  deep  respect  and  sympathy  for  these  people, 
for  their  manliness  and  good  nature,  their  hospitality,  and  their 
intellect.  I  felt  more  at  home,  however,  with  the  reindeer-breeding 
Tungusians,  who  are  more  alert,  open-minded,  straightforward, 
and  psychically  more  developed,  and  I  found  that  A.  von  Midden- 
dorff  was  perfectly  right  in  styling  them  the  aristocracy  of  Siberia. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  constant  intercourse  with  an  animal 
as  noble,  civil,  and  civilized  as  the  reindeer  has  a  psychical  value, 
and  exerts  a  beneficial  and  ennobling  influence  on  the  hearts  of  the 
people.  Let  me  quote  the  experience  of  a  Finnish  author.  Among 
the  Lapp,  songs  are  particularly  cultivated  by  the  reindeer-breeders; 
and  in  the  opinion  of  Armas  Launis,1  who  has  published  a  compre- 
hensive collection  of  such  songs  with  their  musical  notations,  they 
may  be  regarded  as  the  originators  of  the  songs  which  receive  their 
natural  explanation  from  the  life  of  the  herder.  At  home  he  is 
reserved  and  taciturn,  and  he  scarcely  sings  otherwise  than  during 
his  sojourn  on  the  tundra,  where  he  tends  his  herd.  Confronted 
with  the  wide  panorama  of  lakes  and  the  blue  mountains  bordering 
the  horizon,  he  will  remember  a  good  friend  or  brood  evil  against 
an  enemy.  The  reminiscence  assumes  shape  in  words  and  tones, 
and  a  tune  thus  arises  on  the  subject  of  his  thought.  While  he 
looks  over  his  herd  with  a  feeling  of  content,  he  gives  vent  to  his 
sentiments,  and,  muttering  the  words  "  cabba  cello  cabba  cello  " 
(handsome  herd,  handsome  herd),  he  will  finally  compose  a  melody 
in  praise  of  his  flock. 

1  "  Lappische  Juoigos-Melodien,"  Memories  de  la  Societe  finno-ougrienne  (Helsing- 
fors,  1908),  vol.  xxvi. 


144  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

Hahn1  says  that  the  economic  value  of  the  reindeer  has  been 
overstated,  as  would  follow  from  the  fact  that  it  is  restricted 
everywhere  to  the  aborigines;  while  Europeans  did  not  take  to  its 
breeding,  even  there,  where  the  animal  would  be  important.  Again 
he  thinks  that  "  the  reindeer  is  not  sufficient  to  man  of  European 
descent  and  culture,  or  that  the  latter  has  not  the  patience  required 
for  it;  in  this  point  he  is  surpassed  by  the  '  savage.'  '  But  Oh  there, 
the  Norseman,  was  a  European  (p.  94).  The  Russians,  when 
advancing  and  settling  in  northern  regions,  where  horses  do  not 
thrive,  easily  took  to  reindeer-breeding.  P.  S.  Pallas2  reported  in 
1772,  in  regard  to  the  district  of  Obdorsk,  that  horses  imported 
there  did  not  live  a  year,  and  that  the  reindeer-herds, — which, 
despite  numerous  diseases  and  wild  animals,  increase  rapidly — 
form  a  not  unimportant  wealth  both  of  the  Russian  and  Pagan 
inhabitants  of  those  northern  countries.3 

Erroneous  also  is  Hahn's  statement  that 

the  reindeer  has  never  followed  the  European,  as  particularly  shown  by  the 
introduction  in  1770  into  Iceland  of  reindeer  which  were  supposed  to  give  new 
domestic  animals  to  that  poor  country. 

What  was  introduced  into  Iceland  in  1771  and  1777  (not  in  1770) 
were  not  domestic,  but  wild  reindeer  from  Norway,  which  were 
gradually  shot,  and  are  now  almost  exterminated.4 

The  reindeer  introduced  into  Alaska  at  the  end  of  the  last 
century  are  as  useful  to  the  whites  as  to  the  Eskimo.  Says  Dr. 

1  Haustiere,  pp.  264,  267. 

2  Reise  durch  verschiedene  Provinzen  des  russischen  Reichs,  vol.  in,  p.  23. 

3  The  Russian  nomenclature  relating  to  the  reindeer,  chiefly  in  the  dialects  of 
northern  Russia,  is  borrowed  from  Finno-Ugrian  languages:  thus  pyzik  (young  rein- 
deer, fawn),  that  already  occurs  in  Old  Russian,  from  Syryan  pez,  Wotyak  puzey, 
Wogul  pezka,  Ostyak  pezi;  vazatka  or  vdzenka  (doe)  from  Syryan  vazenka,  Lapp  vaz, 
vaza;  to  the  same  root  belong  in  the  dialect  of  Archangel  vacegal'  (to  tend  a  reindeer- 
herd),   vacuga   (reindeer  relais),   vacuzn'a   (reindeer-herd);   hora   (reindeer-bull)   from 
Samoyed  hora,  Syryan  kora;  girvas  (male  reindeer)  from  Finnish  hirvas;  gigna,  higna 
(leash  in  the  reindeer-harness)  from  Finnish  hihna;  loima  (a  herd  of  reindeer)  from 
Finnish  lauma,  etc.  (compare  R.  Meckelein,  Die  finnisch-ugrischen  Elemente  im  Rus- 
sischen,  p.  20). 

4  See  the  interesting  account  of  A.  Gebhardt  (after  Th.  Thoroddsen),  "  Die  Ren- 
tiere  auf  Island,"  Globus,  vol.  86  (1904),  pp.  261-263. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS  DOMESTICATION  145 

Jackson,  the  father  of  this  new  economic  movement,  on  this  point:1 

The  industrial  pursuit  which  nature  has  mapped  out  for  the  native  popu- 
lation of  arctic  and  subarctic  Alaska  is  the  breeding  and  herding  of  reindeer  and 
the  use  of  the  deer  as  a  means  of  transportation  and  intercommunication.  During 
the  past  season  the  influx  of  miners  into  the  Yukon  region  has  made  a  very  urgent 
call  for  reindeer  for  freighting-purposes.  In  the  original  plan  for  the  purchase 
and  distribution  of  reindeer,  reference  was  mainly  had  to  securing  a  new  food- 
supply  for  the  famishing  Eskimo;  but  it  is  now  found  that  the  reindeer  are  as 
essential  to  the  white  men  as  to  the  Eskimo.  The  wonderful  placer  mines  of 
the  Yukon  region  are  situated  from  25  to  100  miles  from  the  great  Yukon  River. 
The  provisions  brought  from  the  south  and  landed  upon  the  banks  of  the  river 
are  with  great  difficulty  transported  to  the  mines.  So  great  was  the  extremity 
last  winter,  that  mongrel  Indian  dogs  cost  $100  to  $200  each  for  transportation 
purposes,  and  the  freight  charges  fiom  the  river  to  the  mines,  30  miles,  ranged 
from  15  to  20  cents  per  pound.  The  difficulty  experienced  in  providing  the 
miners  with  the  necessaries  of  life  has  demonstrated  the  necessity  of  reindeer- 
transportation,  and  that  the  development  of  the  large  mining  interests  of  that 
region  will  be  dependent  upon  the  more  rapid  introduction  of  reindeer  for  freight- 
ing. There  are  no  roads  in  Alaska,  and  off  of  the  rivers  no  transportation  facili- 
ties to  any  great  extent.  In  the  limited  traveling  of  the  past,  dogs  have  been 
used  for  that  purpose;  but  dog-teams  are  slow,  and  must  be  burdened  with  the 
food  for  their  own  maintenance.  On  the  other  hand,  trained  reindeer  make  in  a 
day  two  or  three  times  the  distance  covered  by  a  dog-team,  and  at  the  end  of 
the  day  can  be  turned  loose  to  gather  their  support  from  the  moss,  which  is 
always  accessible  to  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  stated, 

The  ordinary  white  man  is  unwilling  to  undergo  the  drudgery  of  herding  in 
that  rigorous  climate,  and  unwilling  to  work  for  the  small  compensation  that  is 
paid  for  such  services.  He  can  do  better.  .  .  .  With  the  increase  of  domestic 
reindeer  in  Alaska,  it  will  become  possible  for  white  men  to  own  large  herds; 
but  the  men  that  will  do  the  herding  and  teaming  will  always  be  Eskimo  and 
Lapp.2 

Hahn's  gloomy  prophesy  of  the  ultimate  extinction  of  the  rein- 
deer jointly  with  the  "  miserable  "  tribes  of  the  Ostyak,  Wogul, 
and  Samoyed,  has  happily  not  been  fulfilled.  He  who  is  but 
superficially  posted  on  the  subject  knows  that  the  Samoyed  are 
not  a  dying  people,  but  vigorously  spread  and  thrive.3  So  does 

1  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education  for  the  year  1805-06  (Washington, 
1897),  vol.  ii,  pt.  2,  p.  1454. 

2  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education  for  the  Year  1003,  vol.  n,  p.  2375. 

3  See,  for  instance,  W.  Crahmer  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologic  (1913).  P-  543- 


146  AMERICAN  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION     [MEMOIRS,  4 

the  reindeer.  It  is  protected  by  the  Russian  government,  and  the 
study  of  the  improvement  of  the  economy  has  been  entrusted  to 
special  commissions.  The  reindeer  is  gaining  ground,  and  will 
claim  more  importance  and  attention  in  the  future.  *  It  has  con- 
quered Alaska  and  parts  of  Canada.  The  successful  introduction 
of  domestic  reindeer  into  Alaska  has  led  to  their  introduction  into 
Newfoundland.  Dr.  Grenfell,  who  in  1892  organized  a  medical 
mission  among  the  fishermen  off  the  shores  of  Newfoundland  and 
Labrador,  on  reading  the  U.  S.  reindeer  reports,  became  convinced 
that  he  had  to  have  reindeer  for  his  winter  trips,  and  January  7, 
1908,  landed  safely  three  hundred  head  at  the  village  of  Cremeliere, 
two  miles  from  St.  Anthony,  on  the  northern  coast  of  Newfound- 
land.1 

The  ethnologist  will  watch  with  interest  the  gradual  trans- 
formation of  the  Alaskan  Eskimo  into  reindeer-breeders.2  History 
repeats  itself:  it  is  the  same  process  that  reshaped  the  life  of  the 
Chukchi  and  Koryak.  The  introduction  in  1890  of  reindeer  into 
Alaska  was  inspired  by  a  desire  to  provide  a  new  and  more  perma- 
nent food-supply  for  the  half- famishing  Eskimo.  Up  to  1902 
there  were  sixty  individual  holders  of  domestic  reindeer  in  Alaska, 
forty-four  of  these  being  Eskimo,  the  majority  of  whom  had  served 
a  five-years'  apprenticeship  and  gained  a  competent  knowledge  of 
the  management  and  care  of  reindeer.  In  1903  sixty-eight  Eskimo 
and  one  Indian  owned  2,841  deer.  From  the  1,280  Siberian  rein- 
deer imported  between  1892  and  1903,  and  from  their  natural 
increase,  7,983  fawns  have  been  born  in  Alaska. 

The  Eskimo  has  always  been  skilful  in  driving  dogs,  and  now, 
under  instruction,  is  proving  equally  skilful  in  driving  reindeer, 
and  upon  various  occasions,  when  the  opportunity  has  offered, 
has  invariably  demonstrated  his  ability  to  successfully  transport 
with  reindeer  mails,  freight,  and  passengers  between  mining-camps.3 

1  Sixteenth  Annual  Report  on  Introduction  of  Domestic  Reindeer  into  Alaska  (Wash- 
ington, 1908),  p.  42. 

2  Compare  E.  W.  Hawkes,  "  Transforming  the  Eskimo  into  a  Herder,"  Anthropos, 
vol.  vin  (1913),  pp.  359-362. 

3  From  Dr.  S.  Jackson's  report,  in  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education  for  the 
Year  1003  (Washington,  1905),  vol.  n,  p.  2374. 


LAUFER]  THE   REINDEER  AND   ITS   DOMESTICATION 

In  view  of  the  opportunities  and  facilities  granted  in  Alaska, 
it  is  a  matter  of  surprise  that  biologists  have  not  yet  seen  fit  to 
take  up  the  study  of  breeding  problems  in  connection  with  the 
reindeer,  either  for-  theoretical  purposes  or  with  a  view  to  im- 
proving the  races.  We  are  anxious  to  know,  for  instance,  why  the 
Tungus  reindeer  is  larger  and  sturdier  than  that  of  Lapland,  and 
why  most  of  the  wild  deer  are  larger  than  the  domesticated.  As 
to  the  question  of  color  variation  in  the  domestic  stocks  we  have 
merely  vague  descriptions  of  laymen,  and  the  differentiations  of 
the  various  stocks  have  not  yet  been  determined  scientifically. 
Likewise  the  following  observation  would  offer  a  problem  to  the 
biologist. 

No  deterioration  in  the  herds  on  account  of  inbreeding  has  been  noted. 
On  the  contrary,  the  chief  of  the  Alaska  division  maintains  that  the  reindeer  now 
in  Alaska  are  larger  animals  than  those  which  comprised  the  original  stock  im- 
ported from  Siberia,  that  Alaska  affords  a  better  range  than  Siberia,  and  that 
the  climate  is  better  adapted  to  the  reindeer  industry.  The  herds  in  Alaska 
average  moire  than  seven  hundred  reindeer  each,  so  that  the  danger  of  inbreeding 
cannot  be  serious.  The  introduction  of  wild  caribou  into  some  of  the  herds  has 
increased  the  size  of  the  reindeer  in  those  herds.1 

1  "  Report  on  the  Work  of  the  Bureau  of  Education  for  the  Natives  of  Alaska, 
1913-14,"  p.  10  (1915),  Bulletin,  No.  48. 


AMERICAN 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL  ASSOCIATION 


President : 
Vice-President,  1917  : 
Vice- President,  1918  : 
Vice-President,  1919  : 
Vice- President,  1920  : 
Secretary : 
Treasurer : 
Editor  ' 
Associate  Editors : 

Executive  Committee  : 


OFFICERS 

A.  L.     KROEBER,    Affiliated    Colleges,    San 
Francisco. 

GEORGE  B.  GORDON,  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, Philadelphia. 

B.  LAUFER,  Field  Museum  of  Natural  History, 
Chicago. 

JOHN  R.  SWANTON,  Bureau  of  American  Eth- 
nology, Washington. 

GEORGE  GRANT  MACCURDY,  Yale  University 
Museum,  New  Haven. 

ALFRED  M.  TOZZER,  Harvard  University,  Cam- 
bridge. 

NEIL  M.  JUDD,  U.  S.  National  Museum,  Wash- 
ington, D.  C. 

PLINY  E.  GODDARD,  American  Museum  of 
Natural  History,  New  York. 

JOHN  R.  SWANTON,  Bureau  of  American  Eth- 
nology, Washington;  ROBERT  H.  LOWIE, 
American  Museum  of  Natural  History,  New 
York. 

THE  PRESIDENT,  SECRETARY,  TREASURER,  and 
EDITOR  (ex-officio} ,  CLARK  WISSLER,  EDWARD 
SAPIR,  W.  C.  FARABEE. 


COMMITTEE  ON  PUBLICATION 
A.  L.  JCROEBER,  Chairman  ex-officio. 
"PLINY  E,  GODDARD,  Secretary  tx-offici*. 

HIRAM  BINGHAM,  YALE  UNIVERSITY,  NEW  HAVEN. 

STEWART  CULIN,  BROOKLYN  INSTITUTE  MUSEUM. 

A.  A.  GOLDENWEISER,  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY,  NEW  YORK. 

G.  B.  GORDON,  UNIVERSITY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA,  PHILADELPHIA. 

WALTER  HOUGH,  U.  S.  NATIONAL  MUSEUM,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

NEIL  M.  JUDD,  U.  S.  NATIONAL  MUSEUM,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

F.  W.  HODGE,  BUREAU  OF  AMERICAN  ETHNOLOGY,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

BERTHOLD  LAUFER,  FIELD  MUSEUM  OF  NATURAL  HISTORY,  CHICAGO. 

EDWARD  SAPIR,  GEOLOGICAL  SURVEY  OF  CANADA,  OTTAWA. 

M.  H.  SAVILLE,  MUSEUM  OF  THE  AMERICAN  INDIAN,  NEW  YORK. 

JOHN  R.  SWANTON,  BUREAU  OF  AMERICAN  ETHNOLOGY,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

A,  M.  TOZZER,  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY,  CAMBRIDGE. 


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